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HEALTH 



™ INFINITE C ^ 



ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE 



BY 



JAMES PORTER MILLS, M. D.. U. S. A. 

It 



Copyright, 1908, by 
James Porter Mills, M. D. 



USRARY of OONJsESal 
I wo Uooies rteceivea 

JUL 1 1908 

CLASS A AXc, * u 

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I ,£OPY d. 






FOREWORD. 



The Lectures that make up this volume have never 
been written either in part or as a whole until now. 
My time has been so fully occupied in teaching and in 
healing, that I never thought it possible for me to un- 
dertake the writing of a book, so long as I was engaged 
in active work. I am now indebted to several of my 
students for very full notes of my Lectures, some of 
them verbatim, which have been a great saving of time 
to me in bringing the teaching into book form. I have 
also been able to produce a good deal of new matter 
under the exigencies of the moment, so that, as they 
now stand, these lectures very fairly represent the 
Principle that I teach. I wish to acknowledge my 
indebtedness to my friend Mr. James Rhoades, who 
has been kind enough to look through the proofs of 
this work, and to assist me with valuable suggestions. 
Again, I have to thank Mr. E. A. Hunter for the very 
suggestive design on the cover, which he has so 
generously offered. 

I must ask the indulgence of my readers for my 
frequent offense against literary propriety, in formula- 
ting the same ideas many times in different connections, 



often in the same words. My purpose has been to 
write for a very varied public, many of whose minds are 
in no way trained to thinking on these rather abstruse 
lines, and I have invariably found, in teaching my 
classes, that it is necessary to insist on the same points 
over and over again; for although some could receive 
them at once, the majority would fail to grasp them 
until familiarized by habit. Those, then, who have 
trained minds, will kindly overlook the otherwise in- 
excusable repetition. 

Let me here add a word about my employment 
of capital letters throughout the book. Whenever I have 
made direct reference to Being — First Cause, or any of 
Its Modes — I have begun the word with a capital. On 
the other hand, whenever reference has been made 
indirectly to Being, as a correspondence in terms of 
man-consciousness — God-Power in use by man — I have 
adhered to the ordinary type. 

The subject-matter contained in this volume is the 
concentration of a fifteen hours' discourse given in 
sections of an hour each ; it cannot therefore yield up 
its spirit, even to the most intelligent reader, by a 
casual glance or a hasty looking through, or by any 
oth^.r than a careful consecutive reading, page by page. 

Even as many have been healed, while listening to 
the spoken word, during the progress of the lectures, 
so, also, there will be not a few who will experience 
this same healing power, when the perception and 
realization of the Spirit of Truth, in such degree as It 
is embodied in these pages, breaks over their minds. 



I have not gone into the subject of Practical Heal- 
ing as specifically and thoroughly as its importance 
demands ; I hope, however, later in the year to bring 
out a supplementary book dealing solely with Practical 
Healing, and with the evolving of spiritual conscious- 
ness through meditation. 

JAMES PORTER MILLS, 

3, Cornwall Gardens, 

London, S. W. 
April, 1908. 



CONTENTS. 







PAGE 


I. 


The Body 


i 


II. 


The Senses 


18 


III. 


The Psyche 


45 


IV. 


a a 


58 


V. 


The God of Religion and the God < 


3f 




Science 


78 


VI. 


The Ways of Life 


94 


VII. 


Race Mesmerisms ... 


121 


VIII. 


Thought and its Consequences 


151 


IX. 


Practical Healing 


179 


X. 


Heredity 


199 


XL 


The Pneuma and the Psyche 


217 


XII. 


Food for the Mind 


232 


XIII. 


Talking to Life 


248 


xiv. 


The Way into the Silence ... 


2^2 


XV. 


Consciousness, Illumination 


297 



Again that Voice, that on my listening ears 
Falls like star-music filtering through the spheres, 
'Know this, O man, sole root of sin in thee 
Is not to know thine own divinity!' 

James Rhoades. 



I. 



WE are now taking up the study of a 
subject which is most practical and 
most vital to humanity — The Study of Man, 
his relation to his body, to the universe, and 
to God the Father Almighty. We will in this 
lecture consider man as he appears to the mind, 
cognized through sense, beginning with the 
outermost of himself, the body. 

The body has evidently been constructed for 
the use of the mind. It has been constructed on 
scientific principles for the use of self-conscious 
man. He has, however, considered it more as 
an appendage than as a part of himself; as 
something to be laid aside before he could come 
into knowledge of Truth, or enter into Life at all. 
He has looked upon his body, as well as upon 
the body of the universe, as material, and, being 
material, as separated from God. 

We now propose to show that the body is 
spiritual; but in order to do this, we must first 
define what we mean by the word spiritual. 
We use this word, because God is said to be 



Spirit, and man to be created by Him, and of 
His Substance, so that to be spiritual is to be 
God-like. God is also Knowledge or Omni- 
science ; therefore to know God as Knowledge is 
to be spiritual. His work then must needs 
manifest Knowledge — Fundamental, Creative 
Knowledge. Now the universe, even as we 
know it by means of our senses, does manifest 
Knowledge. The body is representative of the 
Principle of Knowledge. From the fact that 
man was formed as a babe, before he knew that 
he was at all, it is evident that there is a causal 
department of intelligence, working construct- 
ively, of which he has no consciousness. We 
find objectified in the body those scientific 
principles that we are accustomed to use in the 
struggle with our environment. The principle 
of proportion in various forms — the architectural 
form, the mechanical form, the chemical form — 
indeed, the whole order of creative intelligence, 
is represented in the body. The forms that we 
are accustomed to use in mechanical inventions 
on the outside, have already, we find, been ex- 
pressed in the human body. The vocal organs, for 
instance, are constructed with a view to bringing 
forth music. The same principle, which is in- 
volved in the vocal organs of the man, has all 



unwittingly been used by him in the devising 
and making of musical instruments. Therefore, 
in the light of Principle, the body may be said 
to be spiritual, since it manifests Knowledge, 
which God is. It is a manifestation of life, as 
we understand life. 

From a sensuous standpoint, it manifests intel- 
ligence, health, strength, and every other mode 
of Being, in condition; so that instead of call- 
ing the body material, something apart from 
God, not related to the great Power and Wis- 
dom of the universe, we say with St. Paul, 
"Know ye not that your body is the temple of 
the Holy Ghost?" While we recount some of 
the wonderful facts that we discover in our ex- 
amination of the body, we must not let our 
sense-immersed minds go back to the study of 
anatomy and physiology, as if it were mere 
anatomy and physiology that we are consider- 
ing; but we must note the relation of the body 
to that out of which it has come, namely, Being. 
Since the body is so self-evidently constructed 
for the use of the metaphysical man, it goes 
without saying that it will have something to tell 
about him, if he examines it. We often infer 
from a mechanism its intended use; so, since the 
body is related to the self, reasoning inductively, 



we should be able to see something of the rela- 
tion of man to his body. We shall, at any rate, 
see the scientific meaning of certain organs and 
systems of the organism, as regards man him- 
self. Once more I must warn you against con- 
sidering the body, cognized through the senses, 
as if it were apart from God, and had nothing 
to do with the great Intelligence of the universe ; 
I want you to see how much it bespeaks the 
great Spirit of God, which is far more wonder- 
fully expressed in the body than in any of man's 
own secondary creations. 

The body is composed of about two hundred 
and eight bones, articulated in such a way as to 
form a solid framework, upon which are hung 
some four hundred muscles. These bones are 
always formed of the same material, a certain 
amount of earthy matter, and a certain amount 
of animal matter; and throughout the whole 
human race, in normal condition, they are always 
in the same relation. There is some little varia- 
tion in different races, but the difference is not 
essential. The three kinds of joints known to the 
mechanical world are but duplications of those 
existing in the human body. These joints are 
articulated, bound together with ligaments, and 
supplied with lubricating fluid from hour to hour 



by the same Intelligence, which so faultlessly de- 
vised and constructed the body from its inception. 

All this is done for the coming man before he 
knows that he is. The Principle of construction 
has been instinctively evoked by him, and, so far 
as human sense is concerned, has automatically 
prepared him for objective life, on a perfectly 
scientific basis. 

These four hundred muscles vary in size and in 
structure, from an almost microscopical muscle, 
to a very large and very long one. The longest 
muscle in the body is the sartorius, the shortest, 
the stapedius muscle, which has to do with the 
bones of the ear. Now, these muscles are so 
related to each other, and are arranged in such a 
way, that they can work singly or in groups, so 
that, if necessary, the whole voluntary system of 
muscles can be "rung up" at once and put 
into action, or one muscle after another can be 
brought into play. Even those muscles that are 
not normally used separately, can be so used : a 
man may practise and become perfect in the use 
of the minor muscles. All this is circumstantial 
evidence of the attending Knowledge-Principle 
which is not yet known to the man who has re- 
ceived the body. It is self-evidently the same 
Science-Principle by which later on the man 



himself deals constructively with his environ- 
ment, all unconscious that he is duplicating the 
processes of his own body-building. 

Let me speak about "the within" for a mo- 
ment. We see the organs of the body and all 
the action that is going on within, and so it is 
within, as regards the senses, that is, inside the 
body; but there is another "within" that I 
want to indicate here, the "within" that is in 
contradistinction to the senses, namely the men- 
tal. It is that which can never be known 
through the senses, or by the mind associated 
with the senses, but which can be known 
through the mind alone ; and this "within" is 
no less than the Science-Principle itself, invoked 
by the instinctive necessity of man, while yet in 
a subjective state, for the purpose of coming into 
self-consciousness. We find that all this body- 
building has been done by the Intelligence "with- 
in" — so far as the senses are concerned — to be 
known by the mind of the individual. 

Next we have the vascular system, which con- 
sists of a series of tubes from the size of the 
ringer to less than that of a hair, made up of 
arteries, veins, capillaries. The blood, in start- 
ing from the left side of the heart through the 
great aorta, is brought round by the arterial 

6 



system to the venous capillaries, thence to the 
larger veins, until it enters the right side of the 
heart, thence, through the lungs, to the left side 
of the heart, thus passing completely through 
the vascular system. These tubes are simply 
for the purpose of circulating the blood, and are 
a miracle of construction. Some of the walls 
of the capillary vessels are so thin that the 
corpuscles of the blood can pass through and 
mingle freely with the tissues, giving nourish- 
ment to them ; they then return into the capillary 
veins by the same process. You all know this, 
but I am calling your attention to the science, 
to the wonderful demonstration of Knowledge, 
which we find in the human body. 

The rapidity of the circulation is another 
significant fact. The blood has been demon- 
strated to start from the left side of the heart, 
and to work round through the brain and back 
to the right side of the heart in the period of 
thirty seconds, which is extremely rapid travel- 
ling in so short and tortuous a circuit as the 
human body. It has been estimated by those 
who are competent, that it makes a complete 
circuit of the whole body within the space of 
two minutes, going at the rate of about twenty- 
five miles an hour. All this takes place in the 



body in this short circuit of fine tubes; and this 
wonderful process goes on without impressing 
itself on the self-consciousness at all! The heart 
is said to put forth an effort equal to the lifting 
of one ton to the height of one hundred and 
twenty-four feet in twenty-four hours. And yet 
the organ which has performed this prodigious 
feat, itself weighs but nine ounces, and normally 
gives no sign of fatigue. We need not fear on 
account of the light weight of the heart-muscle ; 
Fundamental Intelligence devised it. 

It has been computed by physical scientists 
that the respiratory muscles do a work equal to 
the lifting of one ton to the height of twenty- 
one feet in every twenty-four hours. Yet, for 
all that, I suppose breathing is one of the 
easiest things which we do. This is all accom- 
plished by a Power and Wisdom, of which man 
takes no account, as being associated with him- 
self. He has hitherto only discovered the fact. 
The Intelligence by which it is done, he has not 
realized, because It is primarily related to his 
subjective entity. The senses only take cog- 
nizance of that which is done ; not of that which 
IS. But there is a department in man which of 
itself can cognize that which IS, and this we 
shall come to in the course of our instruction. 

8 



This brings up to the consideration of that 
system, which is the most closely related to the 
mind; that is the nervous system. 

In the year 1886 I became acquainted with 
one form o,f metaphysical teaching, and in 1887 
with another. Both presented different aspects 
of the same truth; each had a method formulated 
for the practice of healing, and for defence against 
disease. These methods were in harmony with 
each other, and I practised them both for my own 
advancement in health, and for the awakening 
of the new and true ideas of life in me, which the 
teaching had set forth. My medical education 
seemed at first to be a great stumbling-block, a 
barrier against my getting on, an ever-present 
denial in my feeling-nature of the underlying 
Truth that I perceived. The teaching, however, in 
spite of this and other barriers, was helping me 
grandly to overcome my most vivid state of 
chronic illness, that happily was not apparent 
to others, and did not prevent the practice of my 
profession. So much knowledge of the body, 
and of disease, seemed to keep me ever conscious 
of it, for according to the teaching of that time 
the body was matter, and matter did not exist; 
it was a delusion of the senses and therefore to 
be denied. But after a time I began more fully 



9 



to realize what a marvel of creation was the 
body; what an object-lesson of intelligence and 
of wisdom its construction ; what a palpable 
epitome of the various principles which we are 
taught in the schools under the name of science. 
I gradually perceived that the science of man, 
the mental being, could but agree with the 
science of the bodily organization through which 
it was operating; that the Life, the mind, and the 
body, constitute a trinity which should be in 
scientific unity with each other. My knowledge 
of the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic systems of 
nerves, with their relation to each other, began 
in 1890 to develop into a perception of their 
mental and spiritual correspondence. A little 
later I was teaching in Chicago that the sym- 
pathetic system was the soul-system of nerves, 
and that life, working through it, represented 
and functioned the Principle of creation and 
maintenance; in a word, that through it the 
primary constructive science, relating to the man,- 
takes place, in regard both to mental and bodily 
commerce. 

About two years afterwards a pamphlet fell 
into my hands, written by an eminent scientist, 
professor and physician, announcing that the 
solar plexus was composed of brain-cells of 

10 



.exceedingly high power, and that itself was noth- 
ing more nor less than the primary brain of our 
existence; that the ganglia of the sympathetic 
were simply little brains, seats of intelligence 
throughout the body, which were making use 
of the Principle, in the various modes involved 
in the construction of the body. 

All this I had been teaching, before this 
anatomical and physiological discovery had been 
announced, under the designation of the "soul- 
system of nerves." 

In 1899, tne author of the pamphlet referred 
to, Dr. Byron Robinson — Professor of gyne- 
cology and abdominal surgery in several institu- 
tions in Chicago — had published a book entitled 
"The Abdominal Brain" (The Clinic Publishing 
Company). For the interest of those who find 
special satisfaction in the scientific discoveries-, 
associated with the medical mind, I will digress: 
for a moment and make a few quotations from 
this most excellent technical work, which how- 
ever only allies itself to the medical schools. 

"In Mammals there exist two brains of almost 
equal importance to the individual and also to 
the race. One is the cranial brain, the instru- 
ment of mental progress and physical protection.. 
The other is the abdominal brain, the instrument 



11 



of nutrition and of visceral rhythm In the 

cranial brain is the seat of all progress, mental 
or moral, and in it lies the instinct to protect 
life, and the fear of death. But in the abdomen 

there exists a brain of wonderful powers 

It is situated around the root of the celiac axis 
and superior mesenteric artery. It lies just 

behind the stomach A general summary 

of the abdominal brain is, that (a) it presides 
over nutrition; (b) it controls circulation; (c) it 
controls gland-secretion; (d) it presides over the 

organs of generation There exists a 

double lateral chain of ganglia lying on each side 
of the vertebral column and extending from the 
skull to the coccyx. The ganglia correspond 
generally in number to the vertebrae, except in 
the neck, where the seven are blended into 

three These ganglia may be looked upon 

as little brains." 

Now this discovery that each ganglion is 
made up of brain tissue of exceedingly high 
power, as a physiological fact, forms a basis 
not only for psychological but for spiritual teach- 
ing. The former has already been set forth 
by Hudson in his book, "The Law of Psychic 
Phenomena, " where he postulates a "subjective 
mind," for which Dr. Robinson so happily 

12 



discovered a brain-correspondence. It is true that 
for very many years psychological science had 
taught of the unconscious mind; but the brain 
character of the ganglia had not been revealed. 

The confirmation of Dr. Robinson's discovery 
by a number of most emnient medical men, after 
personal investigation, appears in this book by 
incidental quotation. 

There are, as has been stated, two depart- 
ments of the nervous system ; the one is devoted 
to the use and interests of the sub-conscious 
entity, the other to those of the voluntary self- 
conscious man. As indicated, the sympathetic 
system is devoted to the carrying on of all the 
bodily commerce and to the functioning of life 
and intelligence, through the avenues of the 
cerebro-spinal system, to the self-conscious man. 
The sub-conscious system provides everything 
essential to the well-being of the self-conscious 
man. It was originally called the vegetative 
system, because man was supposed to grow some- 
what as a vegetable grows. It is now almost 
universally spoken of as the sympathetic system, 
for the reason that it is the seat of the emotions, 
the primary seat of life itself. In its office it has 
to do with consciousness in the form of feeling, 
rather than of thought. It is technically 

13 



spoken of also as the ganglionic system, from, 
the fact that in the course of a nerve there 
is frequently the appearance of a knot, ganglion 
meaning knot. It is also called the system of 
organic life, because through it bodily organiza- 
tion takes place. 

The system of "use" is called the cerebro- 
spinal, the system of self-conscious life. Through 
it nothing can be done by way of bodily or mental 
maintenance. The conscious man, through this 
system, can only use that which is provided for 
him by the sympathetic system, working through 
the avenues of its own soul-system of conscious- 
nese. It will not be necessary for our purpose to 
go into a minute description of these two systems,, 
but an outlined description of the sympathetic 
system will throw great light on the phenomena 
taking place in the under-consciousness. 

Running along down the whole length of the 
spinal column, there is a double chain of 
sympathetic nerves, with a sympathetic brain 
ganglion corresponding for the most part to 
each of the vertebrae. These brains have 
mainly to do with the vital processes taking place 
in their immediate neighbourhood, and with 
the soul-consciousness as related to the vital 
interests of the mental man. This chain of 



14 



the ganglia is connected with all the spinal 
nerves and with all the cranial nerves, so that 
inter-communication between the self and the 
sub-conscious man is most intimate. Situated 
along the great aorta in front of the spine, just 
at the back of the stomach, is the headquarters 
of the great sympathetic or soul-system of 
consciousness. This centre has, until recent 
years, been termed the solar plexus. 

Throughout the entire digestive tube there 
exists a network of sympathetic nerves which is 
termed after their discoverer, Meisner's Plexus, 
and really consists of a countless number of 
brains that have to do with the manufacture 
and delivery of the different digestive ferments 
required throughout the course of the digestive 
tract. Again, situated within the muscular 
walls of the tube, is a similar plexus, Auerbach's, 
having to do with the muscular movements 
necessary to produce that rhythm which bears 
the food along throughout the length of the 
tube, for purposes of nutrition. These two 
systems of intelligence, under normal conditions, 
work in harmony, but, if from any cause that 
harmony is disturbed, Meisner's Plexus may 
pour out an excessive quantity of fluid into the 
tube, or Auerbach's Plexus may cause excessive 



contraction of the muscles involved, and a cor- 
responding form of so-called digestive trouble is 
the result. Since the sympathetic system pre- 
sides over glandular action and over incarnation 
generally, and since it is also the system that 
provides emotion for, and receives in return 
emotion from, the conscious man, it will be 
readily seen how untoward emotions, which 
represent disorder and chaos, vitiate the secre- 
tions more or less, and disturb the organism in 
such a manner, that the digestive ferments vary 
from their normal consistency. The sympa- 
thetic system manufactures and delivers heat to 
the various parts of the body; it is to dis- 
turbances of this system, owing to conscious or 
sub-conscious emotion, that the cold hands and 
feet so frequently met with, especially in women, 
are due; and it is from disturbances in 
Auerbach's Plexus, bringing about a state 
either of tension, of muscular inertia, or ir- 
regular action in certain portions of the tube, 
that corresponding irregularities arise. 

Situated in the medulla, there is a little mechan- 
ism called the inhibitory centre, the office of which 
is to inhibit or shut off the passage of untoward 
or injurious emotions ; and when a man is 
in a normal state of health this centre acts 



16 



automatically, according to its province. In a 
person of robust health, this intelligence is most 
patient, and will suffer much violence before 
giving way; but constant anxiety, fear, anger, 
or other iconoclastic emotion, tends to break 
down the fortitude of this centre, and when this 
happens, we have what is called "nerves" or 
nervous dyspepsia. But let the person see his 
fault, and overcome his disposition to pertur- 
bation, anxiety, or fear, and behold! every effort 
that he makes, every victory that he gains, acts 
automatically to bring this centre towards its 
normal standard, until ultimately its full in- 
hibitory office is restored. 

There is no need to give way to feeling. 
With intelligence above human feeling, and de- 
termination to hold to the good, to the right for 
right's sake, we soon quiet the waves of emotion, 
and a victory is gained, of which the inhibitory 
intelligence takes cognizance, growing stronger 
and stronger in its resistance, until the tendency 
to yield to that which is untoward is quite done 
away with. We see then how the knowledge 
of this one great fact might be of incalculable 
help to many people, if it were put to use. 

Let it be understood, that before the brain- 
character of the solar plexus and ganglia of the 

17 



sympathetic was discovered, the physiologists 
taught, that, standing at the head of the sym- 
pathetic system, it presided over nutrition, 
controlled circulation, controlled glandular secre- 
tion, and presided over the organs of generation; 
in fact, that through it, all the vital and sub- 
conscious processes were carried on. 

Dr. Robinson's discovery takes the vital pro- 
cesses out of the realm of mere "vegetation," 
and gives the soul a thinking-mechanism, 
through which to function. Thus we see that 
it is apparently allowed to play the part of 
Being, to self-conscious existence. 



II. 



IT is well that each one should have an under- 
standing of the body, because, though man 
is essentially mind, yet, from a sensuous stand- 
point, the mind seems to dwell within the body 
and to work through the body. In fact, in our 
present state of evolution the mind does prac- 
tically live in the body. 

Not only do we live in our bodies, but we live 
in the body of the universe, the body of earth, 
air, and, apparently to us, the body of the 

18 



heavens. The mind seems to us to be enclosed, 
first in the envelope of the personal body, and 
then in that of the body of the sensuous universe. 
All this, however, is only seeming; the mind 
really dwells in Omniscience, in Knowledge, in 
God; but it relatively dwells in that of which 
it is conscious. It is conscious only of the 
kindergarten of objects. First, however, it is 
necessary for the mind to awaken to the rela- 
tion of the kindergarten consciousness to its 
kindergarten body, while it seems to dwell 
within it. 

We find, now, that mental processes are con- 
stantly employed in the maintenance, as well as 
in the creation, of the body, in the science-work 
that must unremittingly take place within its 
confines. In our last lecture we considered the 
body as a whole, as an organism, its wonders, 
and some of the mental and vital work cease- 
lessly taking place within it. We will now 
consider the body and the mind, in relation 
to their special department of sense. 

We know that there are five senses ; five physi- 
cal avenues through which the mind takes cog- 
nizance of objects and transactions within the 
envelope of the universe ; hearing, sight, taste, 
smell, and feeling in its two departments of 



19 



emotion and sensation interacting with each 
other; emotion being translated into sensation, 
and sensation into emotion, appearing either 
separately or together. The special bodily 
mechanism of the senses, spoken of collectively, 
constitutes what is termed the sensorium. 
Through this special apparatus prepared by the 
Intelligence-entity within, before birth, the self- 
conscious mind awakens to the consciousness of 
objects. 

Immediately connected with the cranial brain, 
the mind's organ of self-consciousness, there 
exists an exceedingly fine network of nerves, with 
terminal ends in the surface of the skin. These 
are secondary intelligence-centres or sensitive 
points, through which the mind is able to receive 
notice at its headquarters of what is taking place 
in the objective realm of its existence, at the 
periphery of its body. So that, as you know, 
when the finest needle-point is inserted any- 
where, the action is reported to headquarters by 
means of these nerve-points. The mechanism 
by which the report is sent, may be likened to the 
Morse telegraph-instrument with its electric con- 
nections. Thus the message of contact is vibrated 
to the brain, as over the wires of commerce; 
word is then sent back to the point of contact, 

20 



indicating the nature of the touch; so, when 
pricked by a needle or touched by anything, 
we have the message first vibrated inward, and 
then sent out to the surface again, before we 
know that we have been touched, unless per- 
chance our eyes have witnessed the transaction. 

Situated deep within the middle portion of the 
brain, in what is called the gyrus fornicatus, is a 
centre, the function of which is to preside over 
the departments of emotion and sensation in the 
soul, and to interpret external violence of any 
kind to the body, first into its proper corre- 
spondence in emotion, second into its equivalent 
in sensation, pain; more or less of each, accord- 
ing to the nature of the individual and the condi- 
tion of the reflexes. 

Now were it not that this organ and intelli- 
gence for interpreting untoward feeling — be it 
latent or active — into a sensation of pain, is 
hidden deep within the brain, and protected by 
the presence of contiguous cranial organs of 
vital importance to the man, it is more than 
likely that the surgeons would be after it with 
their extirpating instruments, to save suffering 
humanity from the awful thraldom of pain. In 
man's ignorance of himself, however, the intel- 
ligence within has provided wisely for the safety 

21 



of this most necessary organ. For this pain- 
centre is a benign contrivance to warn the man, 
enmeshed in his kindergarten of sense, that 
something is taking place in the realm of mental 
cognition, within his offices of consciousness, 
that demands his immediate attention; a danger- 
signal is thus hung out, warning of the necessity 
for reform in those affairs over which the intelli- 
gent mind should preside, lest a worse thing 
come to pass in the shape of mental or bodily 
wreckage of some sort. 

We do not usually recognize the beneficence 
of this arrangement, but forthwith proceed to 
strike down the little pain-messenger as an 
interloper, and thus get the disagreeable monitor 
out of the way as quickly as possible. We then 
fancy that, having got rid of the pain, the whole 
thing is done, and that health is restored. The 
pain, however,that signalled disturbance, starting 
primarily perchance in the vital consciousness of 
the man through anxiety, fear and mental violence, 
is frequently attended by conditions which go 
on just the same, silently smouldering, until they 
ultimate in fundamental or organic disease ; when, 
if the warning had been taken and acted upon 
with common sense, all subsequent suffering, 
danger and loss, would have been averted. 



In "The Essentials of Physiology — a quiz 
book for Students," by A. A. Hare, it is asked, 
"Is the sensation recognized at the point of 
injury or by the special centres in the brain?" 
The answer is, "It is recognized in the centre, 
but injuries in the sensory nerves are always 
referred to the periphery, and therefore we are 
accustomed to say that we feel the injury at the 
point of contact;" and again, "By what means 
is this peculiar condition in regard to sensation 
governed ?" Answer — "It is wholly governed 
by the mind itself, which has been taught to do 
this as a result of education, experience, and 
experiments, in early youth." 

Now there is such a thing as mind quite apart 
from sensation; the senses so to speak, are ap- 
pendages to the mind for the purpose of observ- 
ing transactions which are essentially taking 
place either in the mental or emotional realm of 
persons, or in the slumbering consciousness of 
nature, which lies back of physical happenings ; 
but the mind only observes them as taking 
place in the objective realm cognized by the 
senses. 

Each physical action that takes place in the 
universe, in man or in nature, must always be 
preceded by movements in the invisible realm o* 



23 



mind-consciousness, in that part of man or 
nature that thinks or feels; for it is here only that 
the motive power of physical action lies. Initial 
power is never visible ; the movement of physi- 
cal stuff is but the sign of it. So, anything: 
happening in the body must first happen in the 
power-realm of the body — the soul, which is the 
vital stuff, whether of atoms, or of the complete 
organization. That which we see is never the 
energy. Every smallest unit in the microscopi- 
cal world is endowed with a feeble degree of 
intelligence, of feeling, so physical science tells 
us, and this is where the power of the thing visible 
inheres. The appearance of sickness or health 
in the body depends solely upon impressions 
situated within the self or sub-consciousness ; 
and it is by the action and reaction, voluntary 
or involuntary, of the self-conscious man upon 
his under-consciousness, that the phenomena of 
bodily sickness appear; and through this same 
law of consciousness, health may be established. 
The senses are the avenues of the mind, 
through which it observes phenomena. These 
movements bespeak force. This force bespeaks 
intelligence of one sort or another, and the mind 
must seek on its own plane, the mental, the ex- 
planation of the phenomena. Thus the mind is 



24 



called back to the realm of the invisible power 
where the motive for everything lies. It is led 
by the circuitous way of phenomena, because, 
for the time, it is too unlearned concerning its 
own latent power and intelligence to discover 
the initial movements in the realm of intention, 
either in man or in nature. 

So long, then, as a man is too ignorant of his 
power to know, without the intermediary of sense, 
the original mental intent and action at the back 
of the conduct, either of his fellow-man or of 
nature, he will remain in the kindergarten of 
sense-dependence. For example, something is 
taking place in my mind at this moment. Now 
if I were to keep silent, you would not know 
the nature of my thoughts, you have to depend 
upon your senses, and the phenomena of vocal 
action, to know that anything is taking place, 
and then you must translate the sound back into 
its terms of mind, of thought, in order to get 
what was actively in my mind at the time. 

Why all this circumlocution? I have a mind- 
realm, you have a mind-realm — why not take 
the thought direct from mind to mind? It is 
because we are educated to depend on our senses, 
upon phenomena, and we are not educated re- 
garding the metaphysical or mental department 



of consciousness. Hence this course of instruc- 
tion, that we may deal with both disease and 
health at their source, in mind-stuff and mental 
action. 

I am now sending a wireless message through 
my telegraph "ticker" — the voice, making use 
of the atmosphere to convey vibrations to your 
receivers — your eyes and ears, which have been 
prepared to convey to your mind the mental 
phenomena that are taking place in mine. In 
return I get a sign-language of how it is affecting 
you by the look in your faces. But I may be 
deceived as to your judgment or feeling; you 
may suppress the sign or give a false one. You 
may smile or frown for purposes of your own. 
Your eyes may sparkle, and yet at the same 
time you may feel and judge very differently to 
what appears. Were we each educated as to 
initial mental action, no deception could occur. 
There are those so constituted, who naturally to a 
certain extent know the hearts of people. Jesus 
was an adept both in knowing Truth, and in 
feeling the race-heart. He therefore was not 
subject to the deceptions of sense-judgment. 
Likewise we, by practising the Principle set 
forth in His teaching, out of which His own God 
nature was developed, should also become free 

26 



from the necessity of sense-judgment, and its 
consequences — deception, disappointment, sick- 
ness; — we should come ultimately to know both 
the heart of Truth and the heart of humanity 
through the development of our Truth nature. 
We are not of those who decry the senses, or 
who deny that we have them. We believe that 
they have been given to us in great wisdom, 
that they are essential to our present state of 
evolution, on first awakening to self-conscious- 
ness; that they belong to a primary stage of 
development, to be followed by a secondary 
stage, which should emancipate us from depend- 
ence upon them, yet enhance our enjoyment of 
them, leaving us masters in the use of them. 

There is an intelligence within man, which 
while constructing the physical avenues of sense, 
was evidently preparing the unawakened sub- 
conscious or soul-man for self-conscious life. We 
wish to understand and co-operate with the 
intent of this, our basic Intelligence : to know 
the relation of our conscious mind to It and 
also to the senses, that we may conduct our 
affairs of consciousness so as to get the best out 
of our affairs of life. It is evident that the 
mere physical senses, without the mind, could 
avail nothing. It is the consciousness alone 



27 



that lights these objective avenues with intelli- 
gence; so the mind, since it is born of, and 
deals with, consciousness, after all, is king, and 
has the last word; yet in the first stages, in the 
Adam-life, man finds himself slave to the senses. 
Take a hint of the instinctive Intelligence within, 
from the old Scriptures. "He that formed the 
eye, shall he not see; he that planted the ear, 
shall he not hear?" That is to say, the Intelli- 
gence which was able to construct these wonder- 
ful organs, had It not an intent? Did It not 
know the very Truth of creation, of which these 
channels were to constitute the first step in the 
evolution of sub-conscious man to conscious life? 
This presages that there is an Intelligence con- 
nected with vital bodily existence, which has 
ideas and carries them out; that the eye was 
"formed," and the ear "planted," and the whole 
organism, mental and physical, made ready for 
the use of the inherent man, before he knew that 
he was at all ; and then at the psychological 
moment, when all was ready, the breath, for 
which this Intelligence had prepared the body, 
was taken in, and conscious awakening came as 
was intended. From this time on, then, the 
whole organization, mental and physical, inclu- 
sive of the primal Intelligence involved, is 

28 



handed over to the self-conscious sense-awakened 
man, for his conscious use. Let it not be for- 
gotten that the latent subjective Power and In- 
telligence which has attended it on its way up 
from birth, still remains with the organism, as 
the ever present resource of the mind for Knowl- 
edge, and for the maintenance of the bodily 
life of man. 

Let us now turn to the special organs of 
sense, and note their relation to the mind; we 
shall find that they are not delusions, neither 
are the objects which we perceive through them 
vagaries ; but rather is the mind deceived con- 
cerning them and their office. It is said in 
physical science, if a tree were to fall in the 
forest, and there were no ear present to hear, 
there would be no sound; that is, that sound is 
not an entity, but a sensation of the mind, caused 
by a disturbance of the atmosphere. In order 
that this phenomenon may be recognized by the 
self-conscious man, his subjective intelligence 
has ingeniously fashioned a delicate organ or 
instrument, which, electrified by the life- 
consciousness, shall catch the vibrations caused 
in the atmosphere by the transactions taking 
place within a certain scale of rapidity, both in 
nature and in organized beings. This instrument 



29 



transmits them to the seat of objective intel- 
ligence in the brain, where, through the agency 
of the telegraph "ticker," the ear, these hereto- 
fore silent vibrations are converted into sound; 
just as an electric bell, the coil of which is wound 
to a certain scale of resistance, translates the as 
yet noiseless vibrations into terms of sound. 

The human ear has a limit of about eleven 
octaves. The lowest note of the scale ordinarily 
heard by it is produced by sixteen, the highest 
by thirty-eight thousand atmospheric waves per 
second. Within this gamut, from sixteen to 
thirty-eight thousand waves per second, occur 
all the vibrations in tone that the human mech- 
anism is capable of functioning. But both below 
and above this, vibrations are constantly taking 
place, capable of being converted into sound by 
a more delicate and highly sensitized instrument. 

In a microphone, for instance, the stately step- 
ping of a fly may be heard, the vibrations of 
growing vegetation or the munching of tiny 
insects. All atmospheric waves, low or high in 
the scale, reach us at the same rate of speed, 
for, though some are formed of larger and some 
of smaller undulations, all travel at the rate of 
about one-fifth of a mile per second. Through the 
mechanism of the ear, which, with its attachment 



30 



to the cerebrospinal system of self-conscious 
life, is arranged for us by our Life, these 
atmospheric waves give signal of what is really 
transpiring below the threshold of self-conscious 
lite. In the causal realm of existence, the sub- 
jectivity of man and of nature, they are converted 
from terms of causal or mental action, into terms 
of phenomena, of effect, which effect we call 
sound. It is telling us of something being done 
in the invisible unknown province of creative 
consciousness within, and is challenging us to 
know the truth direct from mind to mind, and 
to abandon dependence upon the circuitous route 
of sense. 

Everything upon the face of the earth has 
feeling. No element or combination of elements 
is there, but gives evidence of feeling, from stone 
to the most imponderable gas or ether. Strike 
the densest material hard enough, and it will de- 
monstrate its feeling by separating its particles. 
The diamond was amongst the last to give up 
its form under the stress of feeling, but a few 
thousand degrees of Fahrenheit melted its stub- 
born heart, and it meekly took a gaseous form, 
bowing itself out of the world of solids. I do 
not mean to say that it, or any other so-called 
inanimate object, knows that it feels; but that 



3i 



Original Feeling, as cause and effect is One, not 
two. Where you find object, be it atom or 
mountain, there is always a subject, its Cause, 
attending it. 

In the inorganic world the subject is spoken of 
in the apparently material, but really psychical, 
terms of adhesion, cohesion, attraction, and re- 
pulsion. These constitute the feeble degree of 
intelligence with which every histological unit 
is endowed. They stand for the life, the con- 
sciousness of the inorganic world of nature, 
analogous to human sub-consciousness ; both 
having their real original fundamental Life in the 
Divine Substance, God. 

This consciousness — the secondary motive 
power of the physical, in man and nature, the 
starting point of all phenomena of health or 
disease in the body — our minds can reach by 
suggestion, or by a state of emotional realiza- 
tion, which will stir this motive power to normal 
action. But the prince of all methods of healing 
is that of spiritual realization, which is the out- 
come of knowing the Truth. 

We will now examine the sense of sight, 
scientifically and practically, and see its kinder- 
garten relation to the mind. In what way are 
images thrown on the retina? Physiology 



32 



answers that "they are inverted by the lens 
which is bi-convex." Why then do we not see 
objects upside down? "Because the brain in- 
terprets the inverted image for one in the proper 
position." 

Here then we have a most fundamental decep- 
tion of sense, which, had it not been overcome 
by the mind, through experience, reasoning 
against sense-evidence, would have balked the 
human race at the very outset in the endeavor 
to stand with feet on the ground. I am not 
sure that each infant has not a touch of this 
overcoming to do. In watching the attempts 
of a babe to walk, one can but feel that it has 
the "upside down idea" in a degree, especially 
if one has just come into contact with its tem- 
per, and felt the co-ordinate force of its muscles 
in kicking, and the indomitable rigidity of its 
backbone, when one would enforce the letter 
of obedience. 

But the inverted image, which the race- 
brain experience has interpreted as in the 
proper position, is only one of the many decep- 
tions for which we have to make allowance. 
Take the most familiar example, the horizon. 
How many a child has run to see the meeting- 
place between the sky and earth, only a little 



33 



way off! The "rising" of the sun is another 
instance. Again, we go on to the top of a high 
building; the people below look small. Looking 
down the railroad-track the metals seem to meet. 
On a clear day a child in a boat will see the sky 
and the trees on the bank in the water. He 
will thrust his stick into the water, and lo! it is 
bent. He detects the trick, however, by running 
his hand down through the water, and so he 
learns to dissociate the fact from the appearance. 
On going into a place full of machinery work- 
ing, sight and hearing would declare the power 
to be in the machines themselves. No, it is 
away out of sight. It is being abstracted from 
the material consciousness of the elements in- 
volved, which are giving up their life in the 
form of coal and water, yielding up of their 
latent forces, cohesion, adhesion, chemical 
affinity, for which the coal and water stood. 
They are translating themselves into heat and 
steam, both invisible except by contact with the 
atmosphere, the residue, ashes, entering a lower 
state of inorganic form and consciousness, a 
feebler "intelligence." 

These are a few of the deceptions of sense, 
for which we are consciously allowing every 
day. But there are more subtle delusions or 

34 



hallucinations of sight than these. All impulses 
travelling along the optic nerve are translated as 
sight. Now the eye, the most delicate and won- 
derful of all the organs of the body, was formed 
with its brain-connections for the purpose of 
conveying to the citadel of intellectual intelli- 
gence, impulses within a certain scale, that first 
take place in the ether. This substance is said 
to be infinitely more fine and delicate than air, 
far too delicate to be tested by any instrument 
as yet known; it is supposed to reach from earth 
to the sun, to enter into the fabric of all liquids 
and solids, to pervade the atmosphere, and to 
fill all space. Through this extremely delicate 
and rarefied ether, vibrations are sent, represent- 
ing the power-side of the blazing sun. These 
vibrations, travelling in the ether at the rate of 
one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles a 
second, are translated by the brain as light ; 
thus the mind sees light. But they make no 
sound, they appeal to no other sense, except 
that for which the special instrument was pre- 
pared to receive them on this magnificent scale. 
A single light-wave is supposed to be about 
one five-hundred millionth part of an inch in 
length. 

There is a light-scale, or gamut, represented 

35 



by the colors of the prism. The lower end of 
this scale is the color red; violet is at the other 
end. Beyond the red, low down in the scale, 
are other sun-rays — vibrations — known as heat- 
rays. We can feel them as heat, but we do not 
feel them as light, because they are formed of 
waves too large to affect the eye-mechanism. So 
also, beyond the violet, are rays known as chemi- 
cal rays or waves, too fine and rapid to affect 
the sight-scale ; but the sensitized film inside the 
photographer's camera feels them, and the record 
forms the picture. 

It is no doubt true that the waves which may 
be translated into sight by a suitable mechanism, 
are omnipresent as to space, indeed it is even 
reported in scientific circles that photographs 
have already been taken by the light developed 
from the body of the living human being, with 
instruments adapted to that end. If this be 
true, the sun-rays existing in the human organ- 
ism must consist of undulatory rays above or 
below the scale of sight to which the human eye 
is adjusted. 

The whole universe, which the senses reflect, 
objectively, is undoubtedly full of psychical 
consciousness, which vibrates in the physical 
realm above and below the scale of the organs. 

36 



of sense, only requiring a suitable organ to 
develop as light, heat, or sound. 

The owl, the cat and other animals, have eyes 
whose scale of sight extends beyond the scale of 
human vision, taking in the finer or coarser un- 
dulations, and developing them into sight. 

About thirty-nine thousand light-waves in one 
inch, caught by the eye, are interpreted by the 
mind, as the color red ; fifty-seven thousand 
waves to one inch the color violet, the highest 
in the scale. We have been speaking of the size 
of light-waves; now as to speed. About two 
hundred millions of millions of vibrations per 
second give the color red. Seven hundred 
millions of millions, violet. 

These vibrations mean movement. Move- 
ment means force, and force means that which 
holds particles together — physical life, so called, 
or "feeble intelligence," the sensuous conscious- 
ness underlying visible things, of which the atom 
long stood for the smallest objective sign. 

Color is not a substance in nature, it is the 
sign of a substance. The substance itself is 
Consciousness, God-Consciousness. 

The senses only tell of the object, the thing 
accomplished. In the realm of the object 
the human race has lived. Caught by the 

37 



appearance, we have lived upon the surface, little 
realizing the Almightiness over which we have 
been slumbering the hypnotic sleep of objective 
dazzle. 

The organ of smell, situated for the most part 
in the upper and middle meatus of the nose, is a 
curious little mechanism invented by the life- 
intelligence as an aid to self-conscious existence. 
The evident purpose of this instinctive in- 
telligence was to provide for its self-conscious 
offspring a mechanism that should, when electri- 
fied by itself with the human race-conscious- 
ness, respond to certain physical vibrations, the 
outcome of movements either in the man's under- 
consciousness and in that of those around him, 
or in the over-soul of the personal world. 

This delicate invention is put in motion by 
"odorous-bodies" in its immediate vicinity, that 
act as "tickers," telegraphing to the mind 
happenings in nature, in the hieroglyphs of the 
scale-vibration to which it is tuned. This organ 
is a receiving-machine. All vibrations taken in 
by it are translated into the language of smell, 
becoming either a note of warning, as in the 
case of noxious gas — of disgust, or of pleasure. 
These notes, when the result of vibration from 
without, tell of a presence near at hand, of a 

38 



ticker offering information of its soul-presence 
in its body-dress, in terms of self-consciousness. 

These vibrations are functioned up to the seat 
of self-consciousness in the brain ; and the mind, 
lighted by the soul or psyche, creates the odor 
corresponding to the rate and character of the 
vibration received. 

So the soul of nature and the soul of man 
have touched and recognized each other, but 
only through the medium of sign-language, 
the circuitous route of sense. Each sense- 
mechanism has its own terms of expression. 
The substance of each and of all is God ; with 
each the same God; both the soul of man and 
the soul of nature are comprehended in the 
consciousness of man. 

But these wonderful mechanisms of sense, 
appear to function both ways ; from the without, 
and from the within. They are, however, instru- 
ments of the mind for the mind, and can be 
inhibited or stopped in their functioning in the 
presence of a crowd of vibrating ''tickers" or 
odorous bodies ; as shown now and then for in- 
stance, by a sheer effort of the will not to smell. 
But the mind creates odors at the instance of 
its own ideas, quite independent of its special 
olfactory mechanism. If one acutely believes 



39 



that an odorous body is present, he will get the 
scent of it, though it be not at hand. In the 
case of an hypnotic subject, when the objective 
faculties are in abeyance, if the operator suggests 
to him to smell a beautiful rose, at the same 
time handing him an onion, he will both see 
the rose and smell the scent of it, though he 
is really taking delightful sniffs of the onion. 
The olfactory machine is operated by the mind, 
yet the mind can smell independently of it, and 
will do so at the instance of its own idea and 
conviction, if the latter be sufficiently strong. 

There is a way of governing one's sensations 
and the normal or abnormal cause of them. 
The mind is master of its senses. Odor is not 
an entity, but a conviction or emotion of the 
mind, translated into terms of the olfactory 
sensuous organism, whether the mind functions 
through this organism or independently of it. 

We are constantly using expressions which 
we know are not true, as to science or fact, such 
as "the sun is rising;" and we also use a great 
many which are equally untrue, believing them to 
be true. We are, as it were, hypnotized by these 
expressions. They deceive the mind, causing it 
to discount its own powers, and enslaving it to 
appearance. 



40 



It is estimated that two millionths of a milk- 
gramme of musk is sufficient to put the olfactory 
mechanism of man in motion, and to awaken its 
peculiar consciousness of scent in the mind; 
also that a grain of musk can remain open in a 
room for twenty years, ready all the time to ex- 
cite any innocent olfactory apparatus, yet itself 
lose none of its power. The musk only sets up 
the vibrations which are caught by the nasal 
apparatus, and the suggestion is ticked to the 
brain. The latter calls out the emotion, the feel- 
ing, which, through the alchemy of the mental 
mechanism, is felt in the realm of sense. Yet 
we say the musk smells, making it the active 
agent, whereas man is both the cause and the 
effect within himself, the musk being only an 
object suggesting to him his own powers and 
resources, his latent psychical store which is 
bodied forth in the world of objects. 

In taste too, we have a scientific arrangement 
invented and planted in the tongue, the soft 
palate and its arches, the uvula and tonsils, with 
the "taste-buds" or "taste-goblets," endings of 
the gustatory nerve in the tongue. To this or- 
ganization, highly sensitized within its narrow 
scale of activity by the life-intelligence within, 
is delegated the office of standing between the 

4i 



conscious mind, as yet ignorant concerning its 
own soul, and the soul of objects that bear a 
vital relation to the body-stuff as food. This 
organ receives telegrams from the soul of things 
in the language of vibrations, which are con- 
ducted to a centre in the brain, where the soul- 
consciousness of the man is functioning; and 
it interprets this sign-language into terms 
of feeling, a correspondence of which is tele- 
graphed back to the point of contact in the 
tongue, in terms of sensation. This is the 
mechanism of the sense of taste. Though the 
soul of man and the soul of nature is one, the 
man in a state of sense only, practically looks on 
his live body as himself, and on embodied nature 
merely as senseless objects, apart from himself. 
He regards nature and himself as two distinct 
separate entities; while in the sub-conscious 
world, in their relation to God and to each 
other, they are one; and that one, God and 
man, Spiritual. 

In the psychical realm, objects exist only in 
their ideal or soul-state, whether they have 
been as yet objectified or no. 

That which does not exist already in man, 
either in its psychical or spiritual potentiality, 
that is in his soul-stuff, or in his divine Principle, 

42 



cannot be born into his self-consciousness, any 
more than a house can be built before it is 
conceived in the mind of the designer. It has 
long been held in material science that light 
and color are psychical, not physical, that is, 
that they do not exist as such in the objective 
world, but are sensations of the mind, induced 
by the mechanism of vision, through which 
modes of motion in the ether pass. In other 
words, that the grass is not green; but that 
the growing vibrations of it, which are a mode 
of motion within the mind's color-scale of 
green, are transmitted to the organ of the 
conscious mind, thence to a ganglionic brain- 
centre, and that which, being a part of nature, 
already existed in the soul of man as latent 
emotion and consciousness, appears through: 
the medium of the sense of sight as the color 
green. In like manner, all colors are born 
into the realm of sense, and the human being r 
knowing nothing but what his senses tell him y 
can through his aesthetic faculty, enjoy the 
kindergarten of self-consciousness. But let us 
not forget that man is the child of God, not 
merely of the race, and that that which is God- 
like and harmonious, lying latent in the spirit of 
man, which appears through the visual apparatus 



as light or color, is also capable of being 
directly translated into mental terms by the 
primary mind-organ, without the medium of an 
object, into that phase of mental consciousness 
of knowing and of feeling, for which light and 
color stand in self-consciousness. What is 
true of one sense is true of all the senses ; they 
are prime factors in the first stage of man's 
awakening. He has awakened to life according 
to the senses. Let him now awaken to Life 
according to mind, and no longer be deceived 
by appearances. For the senses only act as 
agents of the sub-conscious man, signalling to 
the self-conscious mind of his own "within." 
When the conscious mind has, through its 
reasoning faculty, been awakened to the truth 
that at the back of every object is the idea, its 
meaning; that at the back of the idea is the 
process of its conception; and at the back of 
the conception is the Principle, as Knowledge 
Substance, as fundamental Cause; then the 
senses have fulfilled the evident purpose of the 
primary Intelligence within, in creating the 
sensorium as a dependency of the awakening 
self-consciousness. The mind comes then to 
enjoy these reflections, these objects, without 
attachment, learning to draw its knowledge of 

44 



things directly out of the Original Intelligence 
from which they came. 

To de-hypnotize the mind from the belief in 
its sensuous enmeshment, and to awaken it to 
the consciousness of its original inheritance, 
Omniscience, means Eternal Life. This would 
seem a stupendous thing to do, but the process 
yields increasing interest, inspiration, and more 
abundant concrete life, day by day. 



III. 



WE have been describing man as he is cog- 
nized through the senses. In the body 
we find a representation of the Creator and the 
created living together, and we find that the 
body was evidently built for the use of the man; 
that the instinctive necessities of the man have 
called forth just the mechanical organism that 
was necessary for him, at his present state of 
evolution. 

In looking at the different parts of the organ- 
ism, it is evident that the body, the mere physical 
body, is simply for the purpose of locating the 
mind according to sense; that one part of the 
body is prepared for action according to will, 

45 



while another part is devoted to re-creating and 
sustaining it. In that which is set aside par- 
ticularly for the purpose of re-creation, there is 
a system of nerves and brains, that has to do 
with construction and re-construction, perform- 
ing all the offices of the transmutation of food to 
flesh, besides looking after the residue which is 
unfit for use, and carrying it off. So we have a 
process of creation going on all the time in the 
body, and we have a process of use going on all 
the time. One department of mind, the in- 
voluntary system, is devoted to looking after 
the man from an internal . standpoint ; while 
another department is constantly occupied in 
attending to the wishes of the conscious man, 
and governs the voluntary system of muscles. 

As we see, everything that we cognize has 
feeling, another name for which is conscious- 
ness; but everything has not self-consciousness; 
and as the universe could not possibly remain 
intact but for the Principle by which it was 
created, or the Knowledge upon which it was 
founded, so is it with man ; man, as a self- 
conscious being, cannot possibly exist without 
God. 

The department of the body that is given over 
to maintenance is cognate, in idea, to what we 

46 



call Being — that which IS, that which announces 
Itself at the very inception of the body, and 
which is not to be sensed. Of this Being, we 
know indeed that it has a department of con- 
sciousness, and a department of body, through 
which it works : for though it cannot be seen 
by the senses, it can be approached by the 
mind. The mind can realize that creation and 
maintenance go on all the time within the body, 
and that this creation is not the work of con- 
scious man. Then whose work is it, if not the 
work of God? 

There is another "within" to which I have 
already alluded, but I must do so again, because 
our minds have not been familiarized with the 
true idea. That other is the mental realm which 
is, before the senses are formed. To form them 
postulates Intelligence : that Intelligence is 
within, and not without ; it does not lie in the 
sympathetic or any other system, but it lies in 
the Principle which is at the back of all. 

The body, then, is maintained, as it has been 
created, on scientific principles, and if we are 
pleased to boast of our intelligence, as human 
beings, in creating all the splendid structures of 
our cities, and evolving all the machinery of the 
world, we must also say that an infinitely greater 

47 



thing was done and continues to be done for us, 
in the building and maintaining of the bodily 
organism, and that our self-conscious secondary 
intelligence has a splendid foundation within, 
upon which to stand. 

We see then, that we get our knowledge from 
that realm which can only be described in mental 
terms. All this outward organism, with which 
I have already dealt, we can now only cognize 
through the senses, and describe in terms of 
sense. But underlying all this, is the same sort 
of intelligence as that which is in the cranial 
brain, only infinitely greater, it being, in fact, 
instinctively in touch with the Omniscience 
Itself. Man's cranial intelligence functions 
objectively — in imitation of that which has been 
done within in body construction — in mechanics, 
for instance. 

If, then, we have within, an instinctive intelli- 
gence constructively working with One so great 
as the Omniscience Itself, independently of our 
cranial consciousness, it is surely worth while to 
try and know something of this Power and 
Presence, which is so essential to us that with- 
out it we could not exist. 

We have then, two kinds of intelligence ; a 
conscious intelligence, and one that we can 

4 8 



perceive is working, but of which we are not 
otherwise conscious. Apparently, Being and 
existence are bound up together within us, sym- 
bolizing God and Man as one — Divine Being, 
and divine existence. 

The babe, when first ushered into the objective 
world, is the man in blank, now setting forth 
to duplicate the experiences in self-consciousness 
which are already latent in his psyche, though 
under the delusion that they are original with 
him; but the first sensation that he receives, 
sensation of air, breathing, pain, pleasure, or 
anything else, begins to form his self-conscious- 
ness, and thus, out of that which has been purely 
subjective and sub-conscious, comes also self- 
consciousness. All the way through life man 
is adding to the living soul, which he was at 
birth, layers of intelligence — more or less 
intelligence — of the same nature as that which 
his ancestors had bequeathed to him. That of 
which we are conscious to-day, becomes sub- 
consciousness the moment it has passed from 
the conscious mind. It is registered in the soul, 
and becomes a part of the race-experience, so 
that we are constantly adding to the com- 
pendium of that experience. 

The psyche is always underneath the self- 



49 



consciousness. Many of the psychologists allow 
that animals have souls, mundane souls, related 
to the body as the natural cause of it, perpet- 
uating the animal race-experience. So also, 
every element and every object has its natural 
cause, its other pole, which, corresponding to 
the human psyche, is the matrix, the secondary 
cause, of the object — the latter appearing apart 
from it according to sense-cognition, while hold- 
ing it still as an inherency. 

The ganglionic or sympathetic system of 
brains throughout the body, is the soul-system. 
There is only one consciousness, but there are, 
as we have said two departments in conscious- 
ness, the subjective and the self-conscious. 
The only department that has been practically 
recognized by us, is that of self-consciousness. 
Whether it grew from something or nothing, 
wc knew not, but we knew that we were 
conscious ; and the cranial brain represented 
to us all that there was of our intelligence. 
The term subjective implies something similar 
to cause, the creative part, the maintaining 
part. Just as the subject is the cause of a 
sentence being produced, so man's subjective 
entity is the cause of the production of his 
objective existence. 



SO 



There is, then, in reality only one conscious- 
ness ; but just as electricity becomes light, heat, 
or power, according to the instrument through 
which it passes, so, the consciousness, the soul 
of man, in working through his organism, 
appears according to the particular organ 
through which it passes; for instance, when 
passing through the cranial brain in the normal 
way, it is self-consciousness ; hearing, when 
passing through the organism of hearing; see- 
ing, tasting, and smelling when passing through 
their respective organs. It is all one conscious- 
ness, one electricity, so to speak. 

These two departments of consciousness are 
working together. The one, however, does the 
work of creation and maintenance, and the other 
makes use of that which has been prepared for it. 
The conscious man says, "I will lie down," and 
he does so; he does what he wills, and yet the 
silent subjective intelligence provides all that is 
necessary to carry out his designs. 

So, also, in our physical organization, we have 
two nerve and brain systems — the involuntary 
and the voluntary. There is the involuntary 
system, over which the man has no direct con- 
trol, ordinarily speaking; whatsoever he thinks 
in his heart, it is the province of his involuntary 

5i 



intelligence to work out into consciousness and 
body-form : and there is the cerebro-spinal 
system, which has solely to do with voluntary or 
self-conscious life. We know this by the fact 
that foetuses have been born without the trace 
of a cerebro-spinal system, with the heart beat- 
ing firmly and with plenty of life; but, being 
without that part of the organization that turns 
consciousness into self-consciousness, there is 
no further inspiration for subjective life to con- 
tinue its functions, and therefore in such cases 
physical life shortly becomes extinct. This 
shows, then, that the cerebro-spinal system has 
nothing to do with the cause and maintenance 
of life. 

What a man thinks to-day is latent in him 
to-morrow. It is registered in his under-con- 
seiousness, in soul-emotion, and now becomes 
a factor in incarnation, having been translated 
from thought to emotion ; so at any time, through 
the recollective faculty, it can present itself to 
the mind again in the form of thought. Before 
he opens his eyes to the world, race-thought is 
recorded on the "wax cylinder'' of the child's 
psyche, in much the same way as words, in the form 
of vibrations, are recorded in the gramophone. 
By means of this process, which is constantly 

52 



taking place, we may have new thoughts, new 
experiences of a different character, on a higher 
plane, and so be adding to the race-experience 
our share towards the attainment of divine 
manhood, with the possibility of making the 
achievement ourselves. 

Some have, through all ages, experienced 
certain intuitive knowledge, such as the intuitive 
mathematician, musician, artist, or architect. 
These have obtained their knowledge from the 
Original Source, which, to the department of 
sensuous consciousness, is the "within." It is. 
true that all these gifts of knowledge referred', 
to, concern the sensuous world of elements, but; 
they bespeak man's connection with Omniscience- 
nevertheless, and tell of the possibility of his. 
knowing the Truth, since It relates Itself to his 
mind directly to that end. The Intelligence 
thus obtained, transcends space, it transcends 
time and everything objective; but for the pur- 
pose of self-consciousness, it is put through this 
particular organism called the cerebro-spinal 
system. It simply has to come through the 
meek and lowly channels of the human body,, 
in order that man may know that he Is. 

Again, I say, that I want you to recognize 
that underneath all these appearances, is an 



Infinite Power and Intelligence which is keeping 
us when we sleep ; and the race is just as much 
asleep to It now, in its waking state, as when 
in the common sub-conscious state of sleep ; but 
if we would enter into LIFE, we must attain to 
the knowledge of our great Subject. 

As we learn our lesson from day to day, we 
shall find that circumstances and objects, which 
used to disturb us, have lost their fictitious power. 
Those who are attaining to this state of knowing, 
find that mental impressions which were wont to 
get hold of and overwhelm them, no longer do so. 
They smile in the midst of them, because they 
know the remedy, and that they can no longer be 
affected by them. That which was a positive 
danger once, they will now welcome, while 
others run from it ; they smile, being free, but 
not without compassion, on those who still fear. 

The subjective mind has been translating 
every phenomenon in the world of sense into 
feeling: no matter whether true as to fact or 
not, or true as to Truth or not, it has been 
registered in us as feeling. But there is another 
standpoint from which to work. According to 
the character of our consciousness have our 
experiences affected us, and will continue to 
affect us. We can, however, change our 

54 



consciousness. Judgment can act according to 
Truth from within ; the mind will then interpret 
from a new stand-point, and we shall become 
happy, happiness being based on our feeling 
That within us which is always true. 

When something happens on the outside 
which seems to us grievous, the moment the 
impression has passed the door of judgment it 
is pictured to us in emotion, and all this grief is 
registered in the soul-consciousness, conveyed 
to the heart, and through the heart to the circula- 
tion, thus acting on the corpuscles of the blood, 
and disturbing their relation to each other. 

The real use of the senses is to bring things, 
which already lie in the subjective state, up above 
the threshold of consciousness, to be translated 
into self-conscious feeling. The senses are a 
grand possession; we could not do without 
them. They are true to their office; it is the 
judgment that is deceived. When we use the 
senses rightly, we may perceive Truth through 
objective form ; but in the kindergarten stage 
we judge falsely, and so the Master said, "judge 
not according to the appearance, but judge 
righteous judgment." Judge according to 
Knowledge, not from a fancied idea of right 
and wrong. Right IS. See what a great 

55 



thing it is to judge right judgment! We then 
can only have righteous things pictured forth 
in our feeling-nature. We can only have har- 
mony. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so 
is he." What lies in the mind will be worked 
out in sense. 

It is well known that in a cholera epidemic 
nine out of every ten people who have the disease, 
get it as the result of fear; the word has only 
to be spoken to call forth an immediate attack. 
There are a great many real diseases, so far 
as disease can be said to be real, that come 
solely through imagination. 

I knew a case of a lady suffering from an 
"incurable" disease. She was a very hysterical 
person, but now all the worst symptoms were 
present, and the doctor had given up hope. Her 
sister had the temerity to say to him, "Treat my 
sister for hysteria, and you will cure her." He 
replied that he thought he knew what he was 
about; but somehow, she mysteriously got well 
after he had received the hint. The girl having 
had a friend who had recently died of this same 
incurable disease, it had been much on her 
mind. We see, then, that people may take up 
ideas of such a negative character that they may 
bring forth corresponding conditions in the 

56 



body; these may take some fashionable form, 
or they may take some obscure form. The 
erroneous ideas produce a corresponding feeling, 
and disturbance of the body ensues. The man's 
optimism is affected, and in one way or another 
there will be an abnormal condition of conscious- 
ness, which will ultimately bring about an 
abnormal condition of body. 

Such elements, as are now, have always been 
in existence in some form, and the consciousness 
of man is nothing more nor less than the sum 
total of all that he has experienced in relation 
with them. Out of the soul-consciousness can be 
constructed, voluntarily or involuntarily, any 
number of new sensations or emotions,, by the 
imagination alone. Just as such states may 
come about through experience, so in the same 
way can the opposite states come about. As we 
entertain thoughts, they become experience, and 
experience becomes feeling. If we believe in 
health strongly enough, the sub-conscious mind 
which has to do with bodily conditions, will 
take up that belief, and work out the pattern in 
health. 



57 



IV. 



The word "soul" has been so often used 
interchangeably with that of spirit, by many 
theologians, secular writers, and in common 
parlance ; it has so long been made to stand 
both for the human and the divine entity, here 
and hereafter, that it is necessary to extricate 
it from the careless usage of the past, and to 
bring out the true significance of it, as evidenced 
by Bible use, and by its Greek equivalent. 

It is said, in the second chapter of Genesis, 
that when man, "made of the dust of the ground," 
drew his first breath, he became a living soul. 
The soul was, before; but it was born into 
self-conscious life at that moment. It, how- 
ever, sees itself and the universe as if objective in 
nature and origin, while, in truth, both are 
fundamentally sub-conscious and subjective, and 
of mental origin. Itself and the universe appear 
to be separated from their Creator, when really 
they are not only united to, but could not for a 
moment exist apart from, their Cause. 

It appears to the human being, as though 
the self-conscious state were the real existence ; 
as though there were nothing to learn or to 
experience from "within," from the mental 



58 



realm, except as reflexly excited from without, 
through the senses. What a stupendous demon- 
stration of instinctive soul-intelligence takes 
place, when the body as a whole, and the cerebro- 
spinal system in particular, first assumes its 
objective office; when the subjective entity of 
man first begins to furnish consciousness, power, 
and intelligence, to its self-conscious creation; 
when, with his senses all alight from the soul 
within, the conscious man first begins to make 
use of his body, and to start upon his prescribed 
mental journey; what a marvel, then, of exact 
science is this self-contained organism ! 

Man became a living soul, then, when he be- 
gan to live the dual, existence of sub-conscious 
and conscious life. 

The soul, therefore, besides its secondary 
department of self-consciousness, is all that is 
subjective of human consciousness and human 
intelligence. 

This is the account of the "Adam man," 
typical of the human race. He is really the 
idea or conception of God, known to God as 
His creation; but, as for himself, he has only 
just emerged from a state of oblivion into his 
first and relative self-consciousness. He is 
now entering upon his career from a state of 

59 



ignorance of himself, the universe, and his 
Creator, on his way towards the knowledge of all, 
through knowing his Creator. At present, then, 
he is an unknown quantity to himself, with life 
all before him. This is the human being of 
to-day, when he first opens his eyes as a "living 
soul," awakening in his earthly paradise, the 
sensuous paradise of the "Garden of Eden," 
from which he is quickly driven out; for "the 
garden," although sentimentally beautiful and 
even enthralling for the time, is not the REAL, 
the ultimate. 

This definition of man, the "living soul," 
answers faithfully to the significance of the 
Greek term for soul, psuche, which means the 
natural man, the human being unawakened to 
his divine birthright, the man who depends upon 
the goggles of sense to perceive, and not upon 
the interior intelligence that formed him ; upon 
eyesight rather than upon mental perception; 
upon the understanding of objects, rather than 
upon the Principle of Knowledge out of which 
the objects were formed. 

Psyche, being the scientific term for soul in 
common use to-day, will be the convenient 
expression of which we will make use hereafter; 

60 



but let it be acutely remembered that in using 
the term psyche, or soul, I always refer to the 
human state of subjective consciousness; as if 
man, the entity, were nothing more than a 
ceaseless duplication of the human race-stuff in 
organized mental and physical form. Psyche 
in no way refers to the divine nature ; and when 
I use the words "human being," I invariably 
refer to the psychical man, never to the spiritual. 

It is evident that the spark of potential self- 
consciousness, that appears at birth, has its origin 
In the organization which was not yet a "living 
soul" before birth ; and that both Fundamental 
Intelligence and human existence are subjective 
potentialities of the soul before birth, as after. 
The soul, to which we are asleep while in the 
mere objective state, though having in it all 
there is to know of objects and their Principle, 
carries out the behests of the conscious man, be 
they wise or foolish, constructive or destructive. 

The psyche, with its negative pole, body, 
constitutes at the birth of the human being a 
fully organized man as to body, and as to 
potentiality of self-consciousness. In the man 
asleep is vested all the vitality and potentiality 
of the waking man, embracing the entire period 

61 



of his existence, in emotion, sensation, and 
physical doing. He is a complete compendium 
of the past, and potentiality of the future. The 
psyche, then, being the subjective consciousness 
and intelligence of the human being, represents 
all the experiences of the race, plus all to which 
the man has attained during his self-conscious 
existence. When he enters the natural sub- 
jective state of sleep, his record up to this time 
is all written, he is all within, a living soul. 

While self-consciousness appears to the man 
as practically his whole existence, it is in reality 
but a department, a state, of the soul. The 
man himself is indeed a "living soul," nothing 
less. He, however, too often behaves as though 
he were merely a living body. 

That the psyche is a complete organized 
intelligence at the moment of birth, with mental 
faculties and organization fully developed on its 
own plane, appears evident in the faultless 
bodily form which it has constructed, through 
instinctive knowledge of the creative Substance; 
also, for example, by the fact that amputation 
of one or more limbs of the unborn child has 
frequently been known to take place, from men- 
tal shock to the mother on suddenly witnessing 
such a catastrophe occuring to another. The 

62 



mother, having the inhibitory barriers of con- 
scious life in full activity, escapes tne physical 
harm, only suffering the mental shock : while 
the child-psyche, being in a complete state of 
subjectivity, and having no protective intelli- 
gence on the plane of phenomena, is subject to 
"suggestion" through the vivid emotion of the 
mother; consequently the mental operation takes 
place in the child, and is attended by its physical 
correspondence, amputation, exactly at the same 
point at which it took place in the case witnessed 
by the mother. 

The idea is that the child-psyche is not 
young, nor small, nor feeble, in regard to its 
mental organization, as the little body would 
suggest; but on its own plane it is grown up; 
it is as old as the race or the universe, and its 
subjective faculties are in instinctive touch with 
the Almighty, as well as with the race-experience. 
It is, however, helpless and cannot protect itself 
on the plane of phenomena, even although it 
furnishes the vitality, intelligence, and force, for 
the self-conscious functioning. 

While the bodily form plays an indispensable 
part in human existence — since man is not, to 
sense cognition, without it — yet itself bears the 
most negative relation to the man, in that he has 

63 



absolute dominion over it, voluntary and in- 
voluntary, according to his thought. 

The man is, essentially, consciousness, but 
his body is one realm of his consciousness. It 
is mental stuff, transposed from the mental to 
the sensuous state, by the witchery of cunningly 
devised organs of sense, which make mental 
entities appear in the guise of objects, the in- 
visible to appear visible, the intangible to seem 
tangible, and intelligence to masquerade in the 
dress of objects, turning the whole subjective 
and mental universe into a galaxy of physical 
phenomena. 

The psyche is the "is-ness" of the mere 
human being, though not of the divine nature. 
The body as a whole, in its official relation with 
the psyche or consciousness, may be compared 
to an electric bulb in its relation to electricity; 
the former transforms consciousness, and that 
which is only subjective and instinctive, into 
terms of growing self-consciousness ; the latter 
translates electricity, which is ordinarily sub- 
jective to the senses, into terms of sight. 

The psyche-consciousness, functioning through 
the body as a whole, produces the phenomena 
of vitality; bringing forth from each organ its 
particular manifestation of intelligence, in sup- 

6 4 



port of the body and of self-conscious life. From 
the digestive tube it brings forth, with instinctive 
chemistry, the various digestive ferments suited 
to the different requirements throughout its 
extent ; from the liver, bile and grape sugar,, 
its contributions to vitality and the incarnating 
process ; from the reproductive organs, stuff for 
"a living soul" ; from the vital brain, it func- 
tions primary life; from the cranial brain,, 
thought; from the eyes, sight; the ears, hearing; 
the muscles, force; yet the Substance of all 
these phenomena, not taken into account by 
material science, is Original Intelligence, Omni- 
science; for without It, nothing is. 

The average human being, too, possessing all 
this wonderful organization, with mental facul- 
ties linking him to his Creator, ignorlantly dwells 
in the sensuous department of his existence; 
his stomach is only stomach, an organ of the 
body, an appendage to the taste-bulbs of his 
mouth ; sometimes merely a receptacle for the 
food involved in glutting his voracious appetite 
for gustatory pleasure ! His mind and fris body- 
are alike renewed from the sensuous realm ; the 
former largely with the phantasmagoria of the 
personality of persons and things ; the latter 
from the elements playing their part in the 

6S 



phenomena of objective life. Little wonder 
that he sickens and dies, since Life Itself is 
mental, not sensuous ! 

What a great mistake, then, is it, to regard the 
body as only material substance ; to look upon 
the functioning of its internal systems also, as 
only material, when all the vital processes taking 
place are in truth mental, and at the same time 
that the bodily commerce is being carried on by 
the subjective man, the latter is interchanging 
affairs of intelligence and mental life with the 
self-conscious man. 

The point I am making is this, that the 
sympathetic, or soul-system has been practically 
looked upon as merely a body-system, and the 
internal organs and their products as though 
they were material and devoted exclusively to 
bodily purposes; when, in fact, subjective mental 
life itself, and intellectual life as well, are 
functioned by that system which appears to be 
only vegetative in its nature. 

Primary mental life is omnipresent in the 
body, yet the conscious mind has usurped all 
the glory of thinking and knowing. Why? 
The body has been inherited as a means by 
which we may attain to mental self-consciousness, 
through discovering the kingdom of our Principle 

66 



and making conscious use of it. 

How wonderful, and how suggestive it is of 
the Deity's ways, that consciousness and self- 
consciousness dwell together in the same body, 
each in its own department, yet freely mingling 
with one another, with interchanging offices ! 
How impossible for either to exist on the present 
plane apart from the other ! How absolutely 
the ONE serves, gives all, Itself included, to 
the use of the other, meekly remaining an 
abstraction, awaiting the fulfilment of the evolu- 
tion of that other, to the point of recognition! 

In psychological science, mind and soul are 
often used as interchangeable terms. The soul 
is really the entity of the human being, and the 
abdominal, or vital brain, is its head-quarters. 

Just as the body, the most negative realm of 
consciousness, seems to the eye of sense the all- 
important factor of existence, while without the 
psyche it is nothing; so the cranial conscious- 
ness, from its elevated position in the body, its 
association with the objective personality of the 
universe, its command of bodily movements, its 
dominion over the body, as to use, seems to be 
the one intelligence itself; yet, like the moon, 
its light is all borrowed. All its life, all its 
understanding, its faculties, its experience, its 

67 



organism, are vested in the subjective depart- 
ment, while it lives aloft, ensconced in its bony 
encasement, imagining that it is the lord of 
creation, and that all else, besides its self-con- 
sciousness, is body. 

This secondary intelligence fancies that it is 
the sole occupier, the only intelligence at hand;, 
that it has a body manned as to vitality by a 
blind mysterious force called life, which, allied 
with a more or less eccentric chemical force, is 
operating its organism somewhat as a vegetable 
is grown. The man thinks that this organism 
is solely related to the elements, that all he 
can do for it is to feed and dose it with elements 
of its own kind, and to have surgical operations 
performed upon it ; and if treatment of this 
kind does not suffice, that he will inevitably 
"give up the ghost," and his body will have to 

go- 
He calls his different organs by names purely 
material, never even suspecting that they are 
organs of the soul, that they are function by 
soul-consciousness, subjective man; that an 
intelligence, far greater than his "moon" intelli- 
gence, is not only attending to his bodily 
commerce, but is also lighting his puny moon, 
electrifying his whole body with heat, light, 

68 



and force : for electricity is one of the body- 
forces; thrust a needle into a nerve-trunk, and 
it comes out a magnet. 

Did the self-conscious man know that he is 
living just above a mine of Intelligence, no less 
than Omniscience Itself; did he only realize that 
the sensuous department of his mind compassed 
all the mind-stuff of the race, he would then, 
even if he wished to live only sensuously on the 
surface, as most do, at least seek to tap the 
soul-realm of his consciousness. Thus he would 
get to know the soul of mankind, and the soul 
of objects, the science of their creation and their 
creative significance. He would then seek to 
come into harmony and co-operation with his 
under-intelligence, and to ally his secondary 
mind with it. He would get to know in- 
tuitively the personality of men and things in 
his environment; and would thus escape the 
guessing process that must obtain, so long as 
knowledge of facts is sought through the mask 
of objective personality. I am speaking only of 
the psyche, the natural man, in this lecture; 
"But there is a spirit in man, And the breath of 
the Almighty giveth them understanding." 

Just as God has planted in the soul-organiza- 
tion faculties created out of his own Knowledge- 

6 9 



Substance, that the soul might draw upon Him 
instinctively and involuntarily for creative wisdom 
and power; so the psyche has, in imitation of 
the Most High, duplicated its own inheritance, 
its eight faculties, in its creation, the cranial 
brain mind; thus placing the self-conscious 
department of its existence in exact touch with 
its own primary mind, and through it with The 
Omniscience Itself; much as a father might 
say to a son, "Draw on me for what funds you 
need, and I will draw on my bank for the sum 
desired." 

Of the two departments of mind belonging to 
man's consciousness, one, the objective mind, 
takes cognizance of its environment by means 
of the five senses. Its highest faculties are, 
reason, judgment, and recollection. These are 
for the conscious man's awakening and progress 
in dealing with his environment. 

The faculties of the subjective mind are, per- 
ception, imagination, reason (deductive), judge- 
ment, memory, abstraction, aesthetic taste, and 
will. Consciousness, I hold, is not a faculty of 
the mind, but is the mind-stuff in which they play 
and with which they deal. The subjective mind 
is aware of all the happenings in consciousness, 
whether subjective or objective, by its own in- 

70 



herent knowledge, independent of the physical 
senses. It cognizes mental acts, acts of con- 
sciousness, before and after they appear in phe- 
nomena, it being the starting-point of all action. 
It perceives on its own plane, where cause and 
effect are inseparable; the realm where every- 
thing is conceived mentally, before it is clothed 
with the elements and born. 

The psyche is the storehouse of memory; and 
everything taking place in it, in the conscious 
mind and in its environment, is recorded in terms 
of vibration on the wax cylinder, as it were, of 
this "soul-gramophone," which is itself a com- 
pendium of ages of creation. 

This accumulation of mind-experience is the 
legacy of each human being. It puts the man 
in touch with the past generations, through the 
synchronous action of the conscious and the sub- 
conscious mind, and this race-record must ever 
be perpetuated, so long as the light of the senses 
guides the mind. 

It is the subjective mind that in sensitive 
persons, under certain temperamental condi- 
tions, reads and imparts to its conscious confrere, 
the contents of sealed envelopes; that so 
mysteriously moves heavy furniture about the 
room ; that opens locked doors without hand or 



/i 



key; that unerringly guides the somnambulist 
through the most dangerous wilds and byways; 
that solves the most difficult problems, which the 
subject had failed to solve in his waking state; 
that finds lost articles; that speaks foreign 
languages fluently and correctly, the subject 
never having learned them ; in fact, that per- 
forms all the feats which, for lack of natural 
cause, have been by some attributed to "spirits." 

Whatever "spirits" may do through the sons 
of men, innumerable experiments with hypno- 
tized subjects have proved that there is also a 
natural scientific interpretation of the phenomena. 
It is claimed that the feats of the subjective 
mind compass the whole field of transactions 
that have been looked upon as supernatural, 
and that all the phenomena of clairvoyance, 
clairaudience, spiritualism, etc., maybe accounted 
for thus. The performances of intuitive mathe- 
matical and musical prodigies, such as Zerah 
Colburn and the negro idiot, "Blind Tom," can 
also be accounted for in this way. It is the 
objective mind giving itself up on these lines to 
the working of the sub-conscious intelligence 
within. 

It has been said that the psyche has universal 
intelligence concerning the affairs of human 



72 



consciousness. As the universal psyche, or 
"oversoul," is the germinating place of objects 
in the natural world or macrocosm, so the 
microcosm, the individual soul, is the germinat- 
ing place of human existence, in it lying the per- 
petual potency of the human race. 

Its organization being strictly mental makes 
it the storehouse of human knowledge. The 
well is deep. If one would know, the knowledge 
is at hand. 

The origin of the soul, according to material 
science, is hypothetically a ferment, which must, 
then, comprise a trinity: life, mind, and elements. 
This ferment, put in motion, evolves individual 
psyche, active intelligence, which pari passu, 
instinctively and intelligently is supposed to 
evolve body. Thus is the experience of the 
human race perpetuated in every child of man. 
The various illnesses to which mankind has been 
subject, follow in the individual, as it were 
automatically, when the conditions of mind and 
environment are duplicated. More or less 
changeful experiences belonging to different 
ages bring abundant variety, new types of 
mental happenings, both as to general conscious- 
ness, and as to disease. 

This is all, however, judgment according to 

73 



appearance, after the manner in which the race 
has been living; and as to fact, it is more or 
less true; it is experience, but it leaves out the 
fundamental Truth, God. The highest form 
of consciousness is feeling, emotion; it is the 
vital element of the living soul. The cranial 
brain will translate feeling into thought, just as 
the sympathetic centre in the medulla will 
translate thought into feeling. The subjective 
mind translates emotion into bodily presentment, 
as evidenced in the face of a young person who 
has lived a strenuous life, or of one who has run 
violently the gamut of devitalizing emotions. 

It is the office of the subjective mind to 
incarnate the mental experiences of its self- 
conscious confrere, from whatsoever premise 
derived; in other words, it takes every belief of 
the conscious mind seriously, no matter how 
absurd it may be, and works it out in mental 
and bodily phenomena. 

The reason and judgment are all that stand 
between the conscious mind, and the belief in 
anything that may be suggested — any "tramp 
idea" that may chance along. 

By the light of the syllogistic faculty, the man 
can discriminate between absurdities and normal 
facts, and thus choose what he will believe ; but 



when the objective faculties are in abeyance, 
through hypnotism or through natural trance, 
he is in a subjective state, and will believe any 
absurd thing told him by the operator. He is 
then open to "suggestion." He will become 
violently ill, or as suddenly well, of the disease 
suggested to him; he will become intoxicated 
on water, if he drinks it under the suggestion 
that it is whiskey. Not only will a well- 
entranced subject believe and feel mentally what 
is suggested, but the body will present all the 
phenomena deducible from the suggestion, as if 
the condition obtained in the usual way. 

When we are tired or in a state of depression, 
we are more susceptible to suggestion than at 
other times, since the vital resistance then is at 
a lower ebb. A cold taken at such a time goes 
deep, and may prove most serious, though the 
same, under optimistic conditions, would bear 
but trifling results. Either suggestion from 
outside or auto-suggestion, made and received 
wittingly or unwittingly, plays a mighty part as 
to the happiness or misery, health or disease, 
success or failure, of the recipient. 

The average person is all too prone to catch 
the spirit of an epidemic, and to suffer the 
functioning of the same in his body, when, if he 

75 



only knew it, the remedy lies at hand, even in 
his own mental conduct. Through earnest 
contrary auto-suggestion, he could rouse his 
consciousness above the temptation to function 
untoward ideas, or, better still, by habitual 
training of his mind to confidence in the Most 
High, he could avoid the liability to unholy 
influences altogether. 

The human consciousness, as handed down 
from the race, teems with vivid experiences, 
both of sin and sickness; and, unless it can be 
raised to a higher standard, the endless tread- 
mill of suffering will go on. 

As a lively illustration of the prevalence and 
power of suggestion in ordinary affairs, I will 
instance the case of a lady shopping. She 
knows exactly what she wants, and asks for it. 
But the salesman, inscrutable in his ways, per- 
sistently holds up and declares for another fabric 
or color. Her reason and judgment finally go 
to the wall; she takes the article, goes home, 
and ever after despises it, a victim of the per- 
sistent suggestion. There are many whose 
reason and judgment are an easy prey to any 
tempers or to any disease that may happen to 
be in vogue. These suffer disaster at every 
turn. 

7 6 



According to the account in the second chapter 
of Genesis, and in consonance with the history 
of the race-man, the "human being" in his 
entirety became at birth a living soul, and since 
the individual life is a repetition of the race-life, 
he can never be more than a living soul until he 
is "born again," or "born of the Spirit." 

Just as his being born into race-consciousness 
constituted him a living soul, so his being born 
into Original or God-Consciousness will make 
of him a living spirit, and only this. 

To recapitulate, the psyche or soul is a com- 
plete, organized intelligence at the moment of 
birth, with mental faculties and organization 
fully developed on its own plane : it is the man 
in blank to himself, before he has had any 
experience, when first ushered into the world : 
but in this blank to himself is contained all the 
race-experience, as his legacy from the ages. To 
this, the experiences of his own self-conscious 
existence are being continually added throughout 
the whole period of self-conscious life. 

The psyche is everything that is subjective of 
human intelligence, having also an office of 
self-consciousness. The subjective intelligence 
work from two standpoints ; that of Divine 



77 



Principle, and that of human experience. The 
product of this mind-action in consciousness is 
according to the premise of its working. The 
subjective mind extends beyond the psychical 
realm in its origin and office. 



WE have been speaking of the man as we 
have found him, self-contained, self-per- 
petuating, apparently only requiring the ele- 
ments in the form of food, to renew his body. 

To the thoughtful mind, however, it is appa- 
rent that the same Intelligence which originated 
and brought him forth into the world, still re- 
mains with him, continuing the creative act day 
by day, in the increasing of his stature, his. 
power, and his intelligence. 

The man desires food and takes it. Desire is 
mental; it is the call from the other, the funda- 
mental department of consciousness for more 
elements out of which to repair bodily waste, 
provide for increasing stature, and supply so- 
called physical force for the conscious man's 
use. 

In the same way, it was the desire in the em- 
bryo that called for, and appropriated, the food 



78 



from the mother's blood, to complete the infant 
organization; true, it was instinctive desire, but 
none the less desire, and therefore mental. It 
was feeling, consciousness, the instinctive neces- 
sity. The desire came, both in the case of the 
man, and of the forming infant, from the body- 
builder, the psyche, which is the primary mental 
man not yet completely expressed in the ele- 
ments. So we find that the desire for food and 
the translating of it into the body-form are both 
mental processes, and that they bespeak an in- 
telligence far surpassing that to which the con- 
scious man has attained. 

As we, in a sensuous state, understand crea- 
tion, man creates objects out of the elements. 
Man and woman appear in terms of sense, to 
create another out of their own substance. If 
we look upon the man, clothed with the elements, 
as having originated in a race formed from "the 
dust of the ground" — foods of the earth — and if 
we judge of his origin according to sense- 
perception, we judge wrongly, because there is 
a mental factor, without which nothing could 
have been. 

Our parents are not our deep origin, not 
Original Life. They are agents, in the hands 
of the Original Intelligence of the universe, to 

79 



bring us to the first stage of self-consciousness. 
Looking, then, even at the secondary cause, we 
see that it is mental, the desire of the parents. 
We have also seen that there is actually a men- 
tal, creative working going on all the time in 
man, he conceiving in his brain certain things, 
and then working out these conceptions in the 
elements, as seen in the arts and sciences. 

In examining the psyche and the body 
scientifically, we have of a surety come to this 
conclusion, that the body is metaphysical in its 
substance ; that as an entirety it is the work of 
mind ; that it is the sensuous, form of a meta- 
physical, mental substance. The subjective 
entity, having made it for a definite purpose, 
turns it over to his self-conscious confrere to 
that end, who, however, is all unwitting of the 
great destiny that should be worked out with it. 
We have ascertained that the self-conscious man 
of the senses was created by the psyche in its 
own image and likeness, and endowed with its 
own organization. But from whence did the 
psyche derive its own power and intelligence? 
By whom was it created? This brings us to 
the consideration of Original Intelligence, which, 
by common consent of the race, has been per- 
sonified as God. 



80 



If we would know the ultimate potentiality 
of man, we must look to his Origin, his deep 
Origin, and see what he brings with him from 
that Source, as inheritance. There are two 
ways of perceiving; namely, through the senses, 
and independently of them, by the mind alone. 
It is evident that the senses are secondary and 
adjunctive to the mind, for without the mind 
they are nothing; while mind was before the 
senses came into office, and is often active, per- 
forming marvellous feats in objective life when 
they are in abeyance, as witness those of the 
somnambulist. This shows that man is essen- 
tially and fundamentally mental in his Origin. 

Therefore his deep Origin must have been in 
the mental Substance, Life Itself, which, since 
the mental faculties ply between Principle, soul- 
feeling, and object, is approachable by the mind 
alone. 

We are endeavoring to discover scientifically 
what and where God is. Perhaps it will help 
us to begin, by way of example, with man, His 
image and likeness. Man has a personality 
made up of self-consciousness and outward pre- 
sentment, which consists of his own peculiar ex- 
periences and tendencies. Self-evidently, the 
body is not the man, neither is the personality 



the man, -for they both are the outcome of 
experience, of something done. By parity of 
reasoning, then, if God have a body, the body is 
not God ; if God have personality, the personality 
is not God. Therefore, in order that we may 
get at the Reality — God, we are for the time 
being effacing the idea of personality altogether. 

As we look about us in the world of sense, we 
fail to find anything that corresponds to the 
scriptural idea of God as "yesterday, to-day, and 
forever, the same," the Unchanging, Eternal, 
Omnipresent, Omniscient One. 

Science tells us that everything which we can 
cognize is constantly changing; that even the 
densest material that has ever been discovered 
has motion within it, which gradually brings 
about some sort of change, even though it may 
take millions of years for it to be perceptible. Is 
there anything in the whole universe which is 
changeless? According to sense, we are obliged 
to answer, no. But, when we turn to the invisi- 
ble world, not the imaginary, but the real, can 
we think of nothing discernible by the mind that 
must self-evidently always have been? If we 
find that, we shall have arrived at the percep- 
tion, at least, of what God is. What is that 
without which no one could possibly live, without 

82 



which it is impossible to conceive the universe 
as having existence for one moment, which has 
been hidden all these ages, though revealed in 
plainest terms? What can we perceive by the 
mind, that completely fulfils this idea? Turn- 
ing to the works of geometry and chemistry, we 
find that they are all symbols indicating some- 
thing which we do not see, something without 
which we could not be. What is there which IS, 
before we can have nature, before we can have 
man? There is one answer, one name, all-em- 
bracing, all-containing; one splendid, word, 
a word of Knowledge ; this God, the living 
and true God, I now declare unto you. It is 
PRINCIPLE. 

Do not be deceived by the word, or think it a 
cold substitute for the warm idea of God. We 
must take it in its original meaning. It comes 
from •princeps, meaning first. 

We have been in the habit of using the word 
"principle" merely in relation to our environ- 
ment, not connecting it with ourselves and our 
own consciousness ; yet it appears in the language 
of form in every right organzation that man 
has ever set up on the face of the earth ; in the 
form of mechanism, in the form of architecture, 
or any other creative work. Upon Principle he 

8 3 



has been absolutely dependent for all his work. 

We have only known Principle as associated 
with the ar-ts and sciences. Yet the body is art 
and science applied. It is an epitome of the 
different modes of Principle expressed through 
proportion. Before any thing can be worked 
out in terms of matter, it must BE. There is 
that within us which knows Principle, otherwise 
we could not bring forth objects out of matter. 
Man is making use at this moment, in some 
degree, of the Principle of Omniscience. Prin- 
ciple is subjective. A creator must be subjective 
to that which he creates. God is the spirit of 
His works. 

The idea of Principle is not one that pertains 
only to the elements, to creation in the form of 
elements, or to working in the elements. It is 
the First from a mental stand-point. Before the 
Principle of Knowledge was worked out at all in 
the elements, the conceiving Power must have 
been an integer of Its own Holy Trinity. Thus 
Principle is first, not only as regards the body, 
but as related primarily to the mind of man. Out 
of Principle, the mind, as well as the body, was 
produced. 

Just as principle is required by man before he 
can construct a right mechanism, and as the 

8 4 



mental image precedes the physical form, so 
metaphysical man himself, the mental being of 
scientific organization, must have been preceded 
by a First, both in principle and conception; this 
First, in terms of science, is Principle, and in 
the warm personal terms of religion, It is God. 

We conceive ideas in the mind, and they are 
wrought out there, before coming into the ele- 
ments; so that the Principle is the Father of our 
creative intelligence. God is the Creator; God 
is the First of all. In the beginning God WAS. 
Every human being is wrought out mentally 
before being conceived in the elements. Before 
the sculptor can work out his image in sculpture, 
he must form it in mind, then his hands carry 
out the idea in marble. No wonder that we can 
create, no wonder that we are God-like, because 
from the very first we are related to God as, 
Principle by means of our faculties, so that we- 
can draw from It. < 

See how beautiful is the idea of God as Principle 
with us, our inheritance on the mental side! 
See how perfectly it fulfils, when spoken of in 
fundamental terms, that which religion has taught 
us! Can we think of any realm whither the 
mind can go and get pure Truth, other than that 
of the Principle to which it is related? Can we 

85 



think of anything that can give us scientific 
accuracy except Principle ? Even the warm per- 
sonal love belonging to the sensuous life could 
not exist without Principle, for it comes out of 
an organization founded on Principle. We might 
clothe It with a form as great as the earth, it 
would not make the Principle any greater. It 
is there, and we cannot get away from It. Prin- 
ciple expresses in another way the word or idea 
of Being. It IS. It is the "Is-ness" which 
had no beginning and will never end, because It 
does not belong to the realm wherein there is 
change. We cannot grasp the greatness of the 
idea by the mere statement, we must let it sink 
gradually into the mind. 

Even when we are brought face to face with 
the greatest works of nature in the objective 
world, we cannot realize their grandeur all at 
once. When we see the largest trees in the 
world, as in the Yosemite Valley for instance, 
through a cut in one of which it is possible to 
drive a four horsed coach, it is long before the 
mind expands to a conception of their real size. 
We walk round and round them, and the wonder 
of them grows on us by degrees. So, infinitely 
more, with these great ideas of God. The mere 
statement does not rouse the full vibration of 

86 



consciousness ; we have to get used to it, we have 
to go round and round it. 

I want you to get so accustomed to the idea, 
that if you close your eyes for a moment, you 
feel that you are in league with the great work- 
ing-power of the universe. It is worlds greater 
to realize that this vast Principle of Intelligence, 
into the knowledge of which we have not yet 
consciously entered, is with us, than to think for 
a moment that this Principle of all Intelligence 
is somewhere else, away beyond the portals of 
death. The practical evidence of this Principle 
is demonstrated in the fixed principles of which 
mankind is always making use ; we see It 
bodied forth, crystallized and manifested in the 
flowers, in the trees, in all vegetation; in the 
whole of nature we see the Principle shown forth, 
from which we infer the fact that there must 
be, lying at the back of the mental life of these 
created things, the Intelligence which they be- 
speak. The life and activity in the body, and 
the vitality manifested there, are not something 
apart from Principle. They manifest there, be- 
cause Principle is the fundamental necessity to 
body-building. 

One of the means by which the elements are 
dealt with scientifically, we call, for instance, the 

«7 



principle of chemistry. When we speak of 
chemistry, we refer to processes that are going- 
on, but when we say the principle of chemistry,, 
we mean that which is first of all, before the pro- 
cesses can take place. When we say that 
chemistry is going on within the body, this fact 
bespeaks also the fact that there is at the back 
of that principle, the Principle of Knowledge. 
There is no element of the universe that can 
balk Principle. 

Now I have the principle of mathematics, 
chemistry, geometry, and so on, in me, and you 
have exactly the same principle. Moreover, I 
have the zvhole principle, and so have you. T his 
obtains in the realm of Principle, though in the 
world of sense such a thing would be impossible. 

If we can found any work on Principle, known 
and applied, we know that it will stand. Has it 
ever occurred to any of us that man, who has 
erected great and enduring buildings, is himself 
built upon a Principle that has been handed over 
to him for his use, that he may construct an en- 
during character, consciousness, and body, with, 
and upon It? The greatest work a man can 
give to the world is a character and conscious- 
ness constructed according to the Principle of 
Knowledge. 

88 



The great teaching of to-day is to bring forth 
the relation of Principle to consciousness. When 
we are able to relate our minds to our Principle 
in such a way that our mental and emotional 
conduct, from day to day, shapes itself in accord- 
ance with the creative side of things, it will be 
impossible to think of the body ever failing us. 
It will only change, change, change, until the 
natural body will appear to be, what it is, a 
spiritual body. We should seek to know Prin- 
ciple, for in It is evidently all Fundamental 
Knowledge. We must, then, make use of our 
knowledge to build a new character, and a true 
consciousness. Before we can have a perfect 
character, we must have access to the Substance 
out of which character is made. That Substance 
is Principle. The wonderful buildings in our 
great cities, the offspring of man's mind, put 
into physical form by the labor of his hands, 
endure for ages ; how much more should the 
house of man's consciousness remain as a bul- 
wark through all the ages of his evolution ! We 
often see the master, while engaged in the very 
act of erecting one of these stupendous time-defy- 
ing structures, laid low and hastened prematurely 
out of the world by an unfortunate draught of 
air, in the very moment of his inspiration; and 

8 9 



yet the deathless Principle of Life was with him ! 
Might he not have learned to use it, and thus 
have lived? Even so. 

I am reminded of a man in California, who 
with his family had been eking out a miserable 
existence for years, prospecting and mining for 
gold. At length, when they were all on the 
verge of starvation, the last terrible calamity 
befell. A mighty flood washed his house away 
and wrecked it beyond repair. But when in 
despair he returned to the now devastated spot, 
he found that on the very site of the house, the 
flood had uncovered a vein of gold, which proved 
to be one of the richest mines of the country. 
So this family were starving on account of ignor- 
ance, with abundance at their very door. Again, 
the story is told of a ship that had lost her 
bearings at sea, and had run short of fresh water. 
When, after many days, another ship hove in 
sight, and she signalled her for water — as the 
crew were dying of thirst — the answer was, "Let 
down your buckets, you are in the Amazon." 
Again, dying of ignorance ! 

The human race is much in this position, 
sickening and dying of ignorance, though inher- 
iting the very Substance of that by which the 
world and all the things of the world were brought 

QO 



forth. Although we have been told, and by the 
Master, that It is within, and must be sought 
in order to be found, our minds are so hypnotized 
on the disclosures of the senses, that we hear 
the words, but do not feel or take them seriously. 
We hope to realize, in the course of this instruc- 
tion, that the mind can learn to see by itself, all 
unaided and untrammelled by sense; that it can 
learn to see on the plane of consciousness, purely 
mental, and from this plane bring forth into 
objective condition knowledge, health, and 
abundance, which lie subjective to it in its 
Principle. 

Think for a moment of the Principle of Knowl- 
edge. We all have a certain amount of knowl- 
edge ; where has it come from ? I do not mean 
the understanding of objects, but knowledge of 
the Principle of Truth, the very First of all 
things. Everyone who has ever uttered Truth 
has gotten It from one realm only, that is, from 
his Being, where the act of creating is constantly 
going on. It is connected with his subjective 
entity, and associated with his mental organiza- 
tion. We have certain faculties of the mind 
which are suited to the purpose of attaining to 
the consciousness of the Knowledge-Substance. 
The body has been created on this Principle. 



<)T 



Every fact which has been wrought out in the 
mind, and has come into consciousness, has so 
come by means of the Principle of creation. If 
we go to a master to be taught, we only get 
drawn out, that is to say, it is only because we 
have in us the substance of what the master 
teaches, that we can learn at all ; hence our word 
education, signifying the act of drawing out. 

We must be in league with Intelligence, before 
we ourselves are conscious of intelligence. We 
are getting a little into touch with the Intelli- 
gence-Principle of the universe, but we only 
know it with regard to its uses in the arts and 
sciences in the outside world. We must get our 
minds stayed upon that which is eternal, which 
does not belong to time or condition; in other 
words, upon the Principle, Knowledge. Now 
instead of thinking that we are in the midst 
of all sorts of dangerous bacilli, microbes, and 
such things, it is much holier to think that we 
are resting in the Omnipresence, that we are 
in the great ocean of Presence, the great ocean 
of God, and that we are safe ; because we have 
that which is the creative Power of the universe 
harnessed up, as it were, within our minds — as 
we have the chemical elements duplicated in our 
bodies — and we are walking the earth with every- 



thing that IS. This Principle of Life, this 
Principle of Intelligence, is our inheritance on 
the mental side. That which will put conscious- 
ness in order, will put our bodies in order. 
We can construct character and consciousness 
out of, and by means of, Principle, in the same 
way as we can make consciousness every day 
out of objective personal experience; the former 
differs from the latter in being experience from 
the Subjective Realm. 

God is "within" for the use of man, and in- 
voluntarily and unconsciously man is constantly 
drawing upon his Principle, through the clear- 
ing-house of his subjective entity. 

The Great Silent Partner is the Life, the 
Power, and the Intelligence, of His creation, 
MAN, destined to become self-consciously, as 
now potentially, divine. 

The self-conscious man is starting on his jour- 
ney from the land of Egypt to the land of 
Canaan; from the state of ignorance to that of 
absolute Knowledge. Through the ultimate of 
knowing the Great Silent Partner, "at-one-ment" 
will be attained. 

If people would pay to the learning of God, 
by the means that are known to-day, but the one 
hundredth part of the attention they devote to 

93 



their ordinary objective education, then a single 
century would witness a tremendous change; 
mankind would not recognize itself. We should 
know of a truth that the Kingdom of God is 
within us. 

God is the First. He is not the universe taken 
as a whole; He is the Principle of Knowledge 
underlying it. Just as the great structures, that 
man has raised, evidence intelligent action, and 
a basic Principle out of which the action has 
evolved, so the universe and man himself be- 
speak intelligent action, and an identical under- 
lying Principle. 

Principle is the First in the realm of the 
elements; It is also the First in the realm of 
the mind. Though Principle is abstract to the 
intellectual being, It is nevertheless his own 
working Omniscience. From It he gets all his 
fundamental knowledge, and upon It the sta- 
bility of all concrete things depends. 



VI. 



IN forming a true, in place of a false, idea of 
God, we see that it is but natural that we 
should have pictured a personal being, since we 
ourselves are personal and visible; but it is 



94 



possible to have a mental consciousness, without 
form, which is feeling only. It is greater to 
have a God that we can enthrone in our own 
consciousness, of whom to make a likeness in 
feeling and condition, than to gaze at never so 
wonderful a being from a distance. It would 
add nothing to the idea of Principle for It to 
have a personality apart from ourselves. 

Principle is the term for the very FIRST, 
which is too great to grasp as a whole; we will, 
therefore, attempt to examine it in some of its 
different aspects, or modes of Being. 

GOD is SPIRIT. 

It is said in the Scriptures that God is Spirit. 
Now there is the popular idea, and there is the 
real idea, of words. The word spirit comes from 
the Latin spirit us, meaning, as we know breath. 
This at once indicates to us that Spirit is used 
here as a metaphor; and, realizing this, we open 
up our minds to catch its underlying meaning. 
We must get away from the popular conception 
of the term, namely, that God, as Spirit, is an 
ethereal essence pervading space, while yet in 
some way localized in another sphere ; and also, 
as to man, that he becomes a spirit by dying. 
Since man at his physical birth became a living 



95 



soul, and soul is the natural man, he is certainly 
no more than the natural man after paying his 
tribute to death, but rather less, having lost his 
body. 

The psyche is a compendium of human ex- 
perience in the world of personality, and if the 
psyche with its experience is perpetuated after 
death, as is generally believed, it must still be 
psyche. 

It was never promised by the Master that 
"the wages of sin" when paid, should lead to a 
knowledge of God, which is Eternal Life; but 
we were exhorted to seek first the kingdom of 
God, the Kingdom of Omniscience, on the find- 
ing of which alone can we become living spirit. 
It is evident, however, that whatsoever of Truth 
has been concreted in a man's consciousness, 
must be eternal, no less after it becomes concrete 
in him, than before. 

We must also disabuse our minds of the popu- 
lar idea that the word spirit signifies the shade 
of one who is dead. What is meant, then, by 
God being breath? We are living in an ocean 
of air, which is a prime necessity to us. We 
cannot in our present state of evolution, be con- 
scious at all without the atmosphere. The air 
is all-pervading, answering to the idea of Omni- 

9 6 



presence; it is in us as well as about us. That 
which breath is to the physical man, God, Spirit, 
is to the soul-man, and also to the divine funda- 
mental man — His likeness. Breath is the life 
of the conscious man; without it he does not 
know that he is; breath, in the natural man, is. 
the one essential to bringing the objective con- 
sciousness out from its subjective state. 

The child, when it is born into the world, has 
lungs which are shrivelled up, appear solid, and 
lie in a perfectly subjective state, until the air 
comes in contact with the mucous membrane, and. 
Io ! the child has passed from a subjective into an 
objective condition. 

As the breath is the one essential to secondary 
or self-consciousness, so is God the one essential 
to the primary consciousness, out of which the 
secondary consciousness came. The metaphor 
Spirit, then, has given us a very good picture 
of what God is to man, the entity. 

We are calling attention to Principle in its re- 
lation to the "within" of the soul, the mind, the 
body; and as we come to realize the meaning of 
this metaphor and the meaning of this wonderful 
Spirit — this Life that lives us while we are sleep- 
ing, and but for which we could not wake — it 
brings God very close to us. 

97 



GOD is LIFE. 

This is a fundamental proposition. The 
physical condition that we call life is the un- 
named god of the materialist. He realizes that 
if life goes, all goes. Therefore, just from the 
human standpoint, life is the god of the body. I 
can understand how a rank materialist might 
worship physical life as god, and, by absolute 
loyalty to this idea, do away with liability to 
illness for a time. 

But God is far more than physical life, though 
this conditional life is inclusive in Him. God 
is that Life which a moment ago we called 
Spirit, primary Substance; God is the Life- 
Principle, that which is to material science, be- 
hind the veil. 

When the mental consciousness of life comes 
to a man directly from the Substance, Knowl- 
edge, then that man has touched Life Itself. 

"Except ye believe that I am," Jesus said, 
"ye shall die in your sins." In other words, 
unless you believe that the Truth is Christ, the 
divine, you have no Life in you. You have ani- 
mation, but you have no consciousness of Life 
at all. The consciousness that the breath brings 
of life to the sensuous man is one step ; there 

9 8 



is yet another to take. We have to become con- 
scious of the real breath — the breath that is the 
life of the divine nature, the knowledge-nature. 
When man becomes conscious of the divine 
nature now latent in him — of the Spirit, and of 
the Life that is the life of the soul, just as the 
breath appears to be the life of the objective man 
— he will have come into his Kingdom, and have 
conscious dominion over all things, because he 
will be dealing directly with the fundamental, 
and will be at one mind and heart with the Father 
of Creation. To realize this is to bring home 
the conviction to the mind that it is open to us 
now to live in intelligence, peace, and harmony ; 
for there are ways of approaching this Father of 
Creation, and of drawing from His rich treasure- 
store of Knowledge, and this it was always in- 
tended that we should do. Anyone who has fear 
of death, anyone who is pessimistic in his general 
outlook, could he once get a conviction that 
Original Life is right behind the mind, would 
lose all fear, all the unrest and pessimism of the 
present state of his consciousness. It is the 
purpose of these lectures to arouse that convic- 
tion. 

Jesus said, "I am come that they might have 
life, and that they might have it more abundant!)' " 



99 



When the mind gets glints of this Primary Life, 
of this Principle, it becomes transformed. This. 
Eternal Life, of which Jesus spoke, is a posses- 
sion of man now, lying latent to the mind. We 
know how dry wheat, three thousand years old,, 
has been sown, and brought forth abundantly,, 
because as soon as the proper conditions were 
provided, the latent life in it sprang up. And 
this which is so enduring, so faithful, is only 
secondary, physical life. St. Paul said, "your 
life is hid with Christ in God." That is, your 
secondary life, or what yOu know of it, has at the 
back of it a divine nature ; that divine nature is 
the Christ, your Christhood not yet born into 
your consciousness ; but through this divine 
nature in you, your life is safe. You trust your 
life to-day, because it is in touch, through your 
divine nature, with the Most High, and in such 
a state of illumined trust, nothing can hurt you. 
If we could but take this kind of attitude with 
mind and heart, concerning our life, harmonious 
conditions would be ensured. 

GOD is GOODNESS. 

It is well to enlarge our idea of Goodness, which 
is too much related to the outside life, too sen- 
suous. We are inclined to think people good 



ioo 



when they go our way, and do what we like 
them to do, what we admire; and bad when they 
do the reverse. Our idea of Goodness is always 
personal, a state of feeling dependent on con- 
dition and behavior. But we can have a mental 
conception greater than that of mere personal 
goodness — a state of feeling that springs from a 
knowledge of Principle, by which alone we are 
able to feel at all; a Goodness greater than the 
kind action; a supreme knowing; an Intelligence 
wholly reliable, by which we are able to create 
any state of feeling that we desire, which is in 
accordance with Its own nature. In the human 
conception of goodness, if something repre- 
hensible or pitiful occurs, we suffer; but to know 
the Principle of Goodness is to know the way to 
lift ourselves and others out of suffering. We 
do not help — in a God-like sense — those who 
are suffering, by sympathizing with their con- 
ditions. All our sympathy should be on the 
side of the Health-Substance — the healing 
Power within the sufferer. If we want to pull a 
friend out of the ditch, we ourselves must remain 
on the bank. When I was a boy, my school- 
fellows used to laugh at me and say, "You will 
never make a doctor, you are too soft-hearted.'' 
Now you all think me cruel ; you see I have. 

IOT 



come on. It is a greater kind of goodness to 
awaken intelligence and inspiration, than to give 
loaves and fishes. It is much better to arouse 
in you a knowledge of that by which your 
health must come, than kindly to heal you of 
your present trouble. We may do both, but 
true healing should always, in the end, make 
you masters of yourselves. 

Goodness is fundamental. There is no time 
when Spirit, Life, and Goodness, are not able 
to provide for every necessity of the sense-life. 
We have that ever within us which is deathless, 
and we have a method by which we can apply 
It to our consciousness. 

GOD is SUBSTANCE. 

We must take this word in its primary mean- 
ing. It is derived from the Latin, sub, under, 
stare, to stand; meaning- literally, therefore, that 
which stands under. What stands under any 
piece of mechanism? Intelligence, knowledge: 
then knowledge of how to produce it stands 
under an object. So it is with man. God stands 
under man. Psychical man, physical man, has 
been manufactured. Primarily God stands under 
spiritual man, because he is of God's own Sub- 
stance, before he is brought into terms of sense, 



I02 



which is altogether secondary; the substance- 
man, always remaining, is the spiritual man. It 
surely should go well with that under which is 
the Original Intelligence of the universe. But 
here is the difficulty we meet. We are given a 
sort of consciousness, we are able to think and to 
do what we will, to a certain extent, but in think- 
ing and doing we have not evolved to sufficient 
knowledge to co-operate with our Substance, so 
that, instead of conscious unity, we have only a 
sense of separation. 

Substance is another way of saying that there 
is something within to be relied upon ; it ap- 
peals to a new side of the feeling nature. Being 
ignorant of this underlying Substance, we volun- 
tarily and involuntarily, through our thoughts, 
make unwise use of It ; the result in our con- 
dition reveals our mistake, and should point us 
back to Principle. Let us, then, recognize dis- 
ease to be the execution of the judgment passed 
upon us from within, for thinking from erroneous 
grounds. In the deeps of the soul is that which 
is conscious of the fact, that wisdom in the daily 
life has not obtained, and that the law of Tight- 
ness has been broken. The subjective mind 
makes use of its Principle within, for weal or 
woe, the one or the other being determined by 

103 



the more or less Tightness involved in our think- 
ing; and we have to reckon with the condition 
of illness on that account. 

GOD is TRUTH. 

Jesus said, "If ye continue in my word, then 
are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the 
Truth, and the Truth shall make you free." So 
that Jesus told us that it was possible to know 
the Truth, "if ye continue in my word." This 
means, do as I have told you, so conduct your- 
selves that you may ultimately, as I have already, 
come into Knowledge. Just now you believer 
because it is I who tell you. You see that I am 
worthy to be believed. You feel that I KNOW, 
that I am true ; continue, then, to live accord- 
ing to my teaching, as I myself have done* do 
good to your enemies, pray for them that de- 
spitefully use you; learn to be pure in heart, as 
as well as on the outside, seek first the Kingdom 
of God and His Rightness ; and ye shall know 
the Truth, and when you know, you will be 
free. 

Truth is a fundamental term, it is another 
word for Being; it is chiefly used, however, in 
relation to fact. Fact may have no truth be- 
hind it, but may refer to conditions based upon 



104 



foolishness and ignorance. As soon as we un- 
derstand that there is no truth in a condition, 
it ceases to have life in it, and to obtain. The 
light of Truth has come and changed that fact. 
In our wanderings in the sense world we speak 
of false conditions as truth, but we are deluded. 
They are facts of experience, which, bearing no 
likeness to Principle, have no Truth in them, no 
Fundamental Origin. 

Jesus said, "When he, the Spirit of Truth, is 
come, he will guide you into all truth." 

To have the Spirit of Truth consists in the 
active consciousness that we know the Principle 
of Truth, and that we can always determine our 
condition of consciousness by the normal use 
of It. When once we are in touch with the Prin- 
ciple of Truth, It will unfold all Truth to us, as 
we evolve. 

GOD is RIGHTNESS. 

Here again is a mental term. We see Tight- 
ness in an object. When it is perfectly formed, 
we say, it is right. This is the objective use of 
the word. There is also the rightness that is 
right according to the standards of morality, the 
standards that have been invented by the good 
people of the world. This is the rightness of 

105 



the law, which only insists that we do nothing: 
with our members that would injure our neigh- 
bor, but which takes no account of our thoughts. 
The law may uphold us though our hearts be full 
of murder; we do not require the consciousness 
of Principle to keep the law. Again, we may 
have a desire to break the law, and only hold 
back through fear of it ; or we may be innocent 
of any intention of violating it at one moment, 
yet, with the potentiality within us of so doing", 
the event may occur at any time, and that po- 
tentiality in head, or heart, or both, is ignorance. 
But there is a Rightness in the pure, funda- 
mental, primary sense, and this we can learn to 
know. God is Rightness, the Substance Right- 
ness, out of which psychical and objective right- 
ness comes; for even the rightness of which 
we are conscious, in our psychical or objective 
state, is always Principle. We have ever with 
us the Fundamental Rightness that is related 
to the mind, as Creator. Where can you find a 
greater God? Rightness is only one mode of 
Principle, but it illuminates all the other modes. 
It is reliable, it is immutable. Rightness is 
something that we cannot be without. We see 
people, who, judging by their objective behavior, 
would seem to be devoid of it, but nevertheless, 

7 06 



in the subjective self of each one, Rightness IS. 
Without it we could not be. 

We have not hitherto recognized this funda- 
mental Substance which is in us, and is our Life 
at this moment. We are too much taken up 
with our sensations and emotions, particularly 
when they are on the wrong side of life. We 
have but to awaken to Rightness, to throw off 
all conditions of misery. We do not recognize 
this Rightness that is All, as the basis of our 
existence. What could we not do, if we but 
knew how to bring it to bear on all our affairs 
of consciousness ! Can you possibly believe that 
there is a time when this Rightness is not with 
you? It is nearer to you than is your heart. 

GOD is WISDOM. 

We all have the Substance Wisdom within our 
mind-Principle ; the fact that we show any wis- 
dom at all in our affairs, proves that we are using 
God just to that extent. But the wisdom we 
use in affairs is only the reflection of Wisdom. 
Wisdom, like all other modes of Principle, is a 
fundamental term. Wisdom IS. Like the sea 
with its continually changing and restless sur- 
face, its tremendous whirling and dashing in con- 
flict with other forces, while all the time under- 



107 



neath is the deep supporting body of water, calm 
and untroubled, so is the Infinite Wisdom in its 
relation to the sensuous life. If the human 
being, restless as a wave on the surface of the 
water, did but know the deeps below of his 
underlying Substance, how great and luminous 
would be the calm ! 

GOD is FAITH. 

Faith is the Substance of things hoped for. 
The Substance underlying all we hope for, is God. 

To have faith is to know; faith is a synonym 
for Knowledge. There is a word which is cus- 
tomarily used interchangeably with faith, the 
word belief; but it does not signify ttie same 
thing. Belief implies ignorance. Faith is the 
understanding knowledge of Principle ; for in- 
stance, we have faith in the principle of mathe- 
matics all the way through, because we under- 
stand it in some of its workings. We have not 
belief in mathematics, we know. 

Faith is Knowledge. It inheres in Knowl- 
edge. We may believe in something that is 
not true, just as we may worship a false deity, 
but the former is not faith, any more than the 
latter is God. 

Faith is our working-power. If we have faith 

1 08 



in Health we shall experience health. Faith is 
constructive, and conceives in the consciousness. 
True faith-healing is done through Knowledge 
of God, the Health-Principle. 

There is also belief-healing. We can get 
psychological healing merely by belief. If the 
emotions are sufficiently aroused by a strong 
conviction, healing takes place. The conviction 
is, however, not necessarily founded on Truth, 
but may be a perfectly ignorant superstition. 
Just as you get ill by belief, you can get healed 
by belief. 

GOD is HARMONY. 

These modes of Principle all harmonize with 
each other. In the same way, the principle of 
mechanics does not disagree with the principle 
of chemistry. The Principle of Harmony is 
God. The harmony that we realize in our per- 
sonal relations with those about us, and upon 
the presence or absence of which we are depen- 
dent for our feelings of friendliness or otherwise, 
is founded on ignorant premises, and is not of 
the Divine Substance. The Principle of Har- 
mony is immutable, and IS, independent of con- 
ditions, or of any state of feeling obtaining in the 
world. 



109 



GOD is HEALTH. 

How this word appeals to one! Pure, holy, 
wholesome Health ! The word comes from the 
Saxon "hal" which is also the root of the 
words "all/- "whole," "holy." Here again 
we have a mental term. 

We have only known health in its physical 

aspect, in bodily and mental life for the time 

being. There is a natural health which we enjoy 

as long as it lasts, although the next moment 

we may be laid low. This is the conditional 

health ; we must learn to know the Substance, 

and thus be able to maintain the condition. 

s 
Health is Principle, is Substance. Principle 

appears in all that is normal. When we get to 
know the Principle of Health, It will work auto- 
matically, and It will not fail us. It is a greater 
thing to know God as Health, the Health-Prin- 
ciple, than simply to experience health for the 
time being, and never to know what instant it 
will go from us. If we know the way to a place, 
we need not stop to think about it. Just so, 
if we know the Principle of Health, our primary 
organization works it out automatically. We 
cannot learn to know this kind of Health by- 
studying disease. Health is related to the 

no 



organization, but we have to work for, uncover, 
realize, and make use of, the Principle, by means 
of our thoughts. If we do this, there is an 
organization provided within us, which will work 
it out in bodily terms. We cannot touch the 
Principle of Health without getting something 
from It, but it is not by fixing our attention on the 
body that we do so. We have only to realize 
this Principle, and the subjective mental organ- 
ization concretes the idea in the body, and that 
which we eternally are is also shown forth in 
feeling. There is a great difference between "I 
am" and "I feel." People say "I am ill," 
when they should say, "I feel ill." The "I AM" 
is God. If "I AM" could get ill, there would 
be no health, for "I AM" is changeless. Do 
not let us take the abnormal feeling so seriously, 
rather let us take Health so seriously, as never to 
give consent to any deviation from it. To say 
"I am ill" is not to speak the Truth, whatever 
our state of feeling at the moment may be. It is 
no more true to say "I am ill," than it is for the 
man in delirium tremens to say that there are 
snakes in the room. We may say, speaking of a 
fact, a temporary condition, "I feel ill." 



TTT 



GOD is LOVE. 

We do not say much about Love, because the 
current idea of Love is too relative, too element- 
ary. But it does not do to lose the idea that 
God is Love, although we but feebly realize that 
mode or aspect of Principle, because our con- 
ception of Love is so mingled with the idea of 
attachment. But the Principle by which we are 
able to realize the love which we experience 
in our ignorance, from a personal standpoint, 
must be greater than that love. Just as we have 
to see and come in contact with one another in 
sense, to form an estimate of one another, so we 
have to perceive, and come in contact with God 
mentally, in order to be conscious of the feeling, 
Original Love, which God IS. Once this is at- 
tained, there is no doubt as to its pouring through 
every avenue of the consciousness of man, in all 
its creative and sustaining Power. 

We cannot truly love our brother until we 
have loved God, because we have not come into 
contact with Love at all, until we have loved 
God. Human love is based on personality and 
condition, while one knowing the Principle of 
Love is absolutely sure to be in a state of divine 
Love, and must therefore awaken spontaneously 



112 



the corresponding love, and make the same 
manifest between himself and his neighbor, 
illuminating personality and condition. 

It is so much more difficult to love that which 
we have not seen, that the question was put, 
"he that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not 
seen?" — as much as to say, how is it possible 
for a man to love the unconcrete when he cannot 
even love that which he sees and knows? The 
very fact that he does not love his brother is, on 
the face of it, evidence that he has not come in 
contact with Love at all. A man may love his 
brother in the mere human sense, and not love 
God; but he cannot possibly love God, and not 
love his brother. 

GOD is OMNIPOTENCE, 
GOD is OMNISCIENCE. 

While we are in a material state of evolution, 
we naturally interpret language in correspond- 
ence with our state, otherwise words would 
mean nothing to us. Accordingly, the term 
Omnipotence has stood to us for the Mighty 
Force by which the universe is upheld, and the 
planets are kept whirling in space ; somewhat 
akin to an unlimited will in orderly action. But 

"3 



as we proceed in our evolution towards the 
recognition of the living and true God, and of 
our likeness to Him, from the inner aspect of 
mind, and the working of Principle, we begin 
to understand that Omnipotence is a mental 
term referring to the Principle, Omniscience. 

We say that force, whatsoever may be its 
office in its original mental inherency in Prin- 
ciple, is, in the kindergarten of sense, merely a 
created agent attending us, which corresponds 
with our own stage of evolution ; that it is a 
latency in the elements of the universe and in 
our own organization for our use, to be deve- 
loped by the mind, constituting that over which, 
as mental beings, we have dominion. 

We recognize that Omnipotence is a mode of 
Knowledge, the learning of which brings with 
it wise dominion ; not the dominion of force, 
but the dominion of goodwill, of Harmony, of 
Love, since Love is the manifold Principle in 
terms of Feeling. 

We have learned, in our struggle with our 
environment, that knowledge of the "principles" 
which are involved in the objective universe 
brings us power — power over the elements, 
power in the intellectual, the social, the finan- 
cial world, power with individuals ; that it is 



114 



translatable into the satisfaction of such desires 
as belong to the human being in this life, up to 
a certain point. It is not difficult, therefore, 
to understand from our experiences in secondary 
life, how Omniscience, by virtue of its being 
also Omnipotence, is not merely an abstraction, 
since It posseses the virility of Omnipotence 
Itself. If knowledge of Principle, as related to 
the elements, is power, how much more exceed- 
ing great power is it to know Principle as It 
relates Itself to man. 

GOD is OMNIPRESENCE. 

The word Omnipresence, as used to denote 
one of the modes of Being, comes the nearest 
of any word that we know to out-picturing in 
sensuous terms the Great Abstract Mental Sub- 
stance, at the back of man and the universe. 

Omnipresence is an objective term, meaning 
presence in every place at the same time, while 
God, or Being, signifies Cause, purely subjec- 
tive and mental. It is therefore evident that 
Omnipresence appears amongst this galaxy of 
Substance-words as a metaphor, standing for 
the Principle of Omniscience. But even when 
taken literally, as it usually is, as if Spirit were 
an all-pervading presence abroad in space, the 

ii5 



man who looks upon the sensuous life, and the 
knowledge of objects, as the base and summit 
of existence in this world, finds in the word 
Omnipresence the most telling significance of 
the Allness, greatness, and immanence of God. 
It conveys to the mind of the human being the 
most comprehensive and expansive idea of the 
One, who is All-powerful, yet at the same time 
is on his own plane of consciousness, being 
enthroned in space. 

It represents the greatest idea that the world 
of objects may suggest. It therefore, in its 
literal significance, has met the requirements of 
the human race during the evolutfbn of its 
religious nature, up to the present age, when 
we are able to recognize it as a metaphor. 

We know now that there is another realm of 
consciousness belonging to us, that transcends 
space, even that upon which space depends for 
its apparent existence. Principle is, in the 
mental realm, somewhat akin to what Omni- 
presence would be as to space. It attends the 
intellectual being wherever he goes, as his 
working-power, that by which he causes, con- 
structs, objectifies. 

It is the demonstration in man of his likeness 
to God, in that he creates by means of it, just 

116 



as God created man out of Himself — the Great 
First. 

God is man's working-power, his Knowledge- 
Substance. He is the Knowledge of man, the 
great Science-Principle of man and of the uni- 
verse. 

The Principle of Knowledge "within," though 
always dubbed abstract, is capable of being con- 
creted in the feeling-nature of man, as he him- 
self concrete's it in the objects of his own inven- 
tion. It does not hide Itself from Its creation, 
but actually presents Itself to the world, about 
every second of time, metaphorically it is true, 
in the concrete form of the new-born babe ; as 
much as to say in effect, "can you not see that 
I, the Principle of all creation, am always with 
you — that this wonderfully self-contained com- 
pendium of embodied science and art has been 
devised and executed through Me, within the 
confines of your own consciousness? How then 
can you doubt My Presence, as the First, your 
First, when presented with this evidence, from 
your own within? I am Principle, I am Action, 
I am Result. This, my whole Trinity, is an- 
nounced in every right idea, in every right object 
related to your realm of sense. Learn of Me." 

But man, with object-lessons of the Most 

it; 



High all about him, is blind to their signi- 
ficance. 

Just as the infant sucks away at what is to it 
nothing but the maternal object, its consciousness 
all absorbed in the one way of life opened to it, 
so the adult pulls away at the objective universe, 
for food, for companionship, for knowledge, for 
love, for life even, with his perception only open 
to that which is derived from the world of 
objects; with his mind and face turned per- 
sistently away from the Great Subject — the 
Great Original Source of the universe and of 
man, he pulls away like the babe, hoping to 
win health and satisfaction from the effect, 
when they lie only in Cause. He endeavours 
to maintain not only his bodily, but also his 
mental life, from the secondary realm, body- 
food from objective elements, mind-food from 
objective experiences — though the mind is causal 
in its nature — rather than to sustain his mind 
with experiences from the realm of the Most 
High Cause, with which the man is directly 
connected through his subjective mental organi- 
zation, the latter taking its rise immediately 
from Original Life — the great Science-Principle 
of Creation, which, regarding It merely as an 
abstraction, he neglects to exploit. 

118 



LIFE. 

SPIRIT. 

GOODNESS. 

SUBSTANCE. 

TRUTH. 

RIGHTNESS. 

WISDOM. 

FAITH. 

HARMONY. 

HEALTH. 

LOVE. 

OMNIPOTENCE. 

OMNISCIENCE. 

OMNIPRESENCE. 

HEAVEN. 

T20 



HEAVEN, like Omnipotence and Omni- 
science, is a mental term, referring to a state 
or condition of consciousness which is developed 
by the mind having concreted its contact with 
its Most High Principle. It is a state of mind 
and heart, dependent on nothing but the know- 
ing of Principle, independent of all else. It is 
a duplication in the consciousness of man of the 
feeling of Original Life, and were it to be ex- 
pressed in terms of sense, we should say with 
St. Paul, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
neither have entered into the heart of man 
the things which God hath prepared for them 
that love Him. But God hath revealed them 
unto us by his Spirit." 

VII. 

WE introduced the esoteric part of our sub- 
ject with the idea of God as Principle; 
and we have taken the subject of Principle, as 
it were, in sections, in order that this array of 
great mental concepts may represent, in a more 
intimate and vivid way, what is expressed by 
the comprehensive term with which we started 
out. 

All these wonderful words voice the Principle 

121 



which I am teaching — that which underlies both 
material man, so-called, and divine existence; 
the Principle of Truth, of Goodness, of Health, 
of Love; not many principles, but one Prin- 
ciple; many facets of the infinite, indivisible 
Substance that we have personified as God. 

As we begin to feel the desire to lay hold of 
God, we find that this formulation of the modes 
of Being, as Principle, is satisfying to the mind, 
since it represents the various aspects of Fun- 
damental Power in practical terms. We must 
recognize the true origin of the universe and of 
ourselves, as being in this Fundamental Intelli- 
gence, which we should learn to know and use, 
thus becoming able to deal harmoniously and 
successfully with our environment. 

Nothing would really satisfy the mind, but to 
be in close and vital contact with the Principle, 
in and by which "we live and move and have 
our being." 

Now, just as we wrote "Principle" over the 
words of the first chart, so we write "Propor- 
tion" over the words on the second chart, since 
this is the sensuous term for Principle, when 
objectified as form in the elements — the First 
of Proportion. 

I am trying to bring it to your consciousness 

122 



^OPORr /QyV 

NUMBERS. 

MATHEMATICS. 

GEOMETRY. 

TRIGONOMETRY. 

CALCULUS. 

MECHANICS. 
ESTHETICS. 

FORM. 
COLOR. 
MUSIC. 
POETRY. 
TASTE. 
ODOR. 

CHEMISTRY. 

123 



that there is just one Principle — there can be 
but one First — and when we see this Principle 
working, apparently at Its own instance, in the 
natural universe, forming the organic and in- 
organic, formulating Itself — as trees and flowers, 
for instance, — we may know that It is the same 
Principle as that by which we ourselves haye 
been created, and which we also are using to 
produce our own creations in objective life. 

The lesson to be learned here is that these 
elements, which are numerous, are mental sub- 
stances; only we approach them through the 
sense-organism, by which the mind observes 
facts before it knows their underlying meaning. 
We cannot, in the causal realm, apprehend the 
object, which is only revealed in terms of ex- 
pression. We do not see a tree in its mental 
realm, we see it as object. The metaphysical 
tree has an objective organism answering to 
ours. As motions are continually taking place 
in consciousness tending to the growth of our 
bodies, so also, in the tree are motions taking 
place in obedience to its mental life. These are 
underlying mental movements which we cannot 
understand, because we perceive them only after 
they are translated into terms of sense. 

Proportion is the comprehensive term, then, 



125 



for the other forms, or modes, of Principle, 
which we are in the habit of denominating the 
principles of the sciences and arts. 

I have placed numbers before mathematics, 
although included in it, because it is the founda- 
tion of all mathematics, as applied to physical 
things. Mathematics we divide into different 
branches, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and 
so forth. The physical body, for instance, is 
geometry objectified. 

Next we come to another form of mathematics 
— mechanics, which we find expressed both in 
the body of the universe, and in our own 
bodies. 

Chemistry is also illustrated in the body, and, 
like the rest, is Wisdom working through the 
mechanism according to sense. 

All these words represent science and art in 
the world, and simply illustrate modes of Being 
working in the elements, as they appear to us 
after the mind has awakened far enough to 
cognize the sensuous realm. 

The gold of the hills would never have been 
created without the principle of proportion, and 
without the principle of proportion, man would 
never have been able to work the gold. Just 
so, chemical action is produced by the working 

126 



of the great Intelligence-Substance of the uni- 
verse, acting constantly along channels created 
by this same Power within. Man has acquired 
this way of doing things from the Intelligence 
which has done the same thing for him. There 
is but one Intelligence : the God according to 
mind, and the God according to sense, is One. 
Through the senses, however, we see the mani- 
fested object only, while through the mind we 
see the basis of it, the Subject. We cannot 
know Cause by means of objects, while we are 
still in the kindergarten of sense-life; but we 
can postulate the subject, by the fact of the 
existence of the object; and by consciously re- 
lating our minds to Principle, we may know 
the Subject Itself. Wisdom, manifested in any 
of the ways of Principle, is but the sign that 
Wisdom Is; and Wisdom brings forth bound- 
lessly for man's comfort. Our own intelligence 
is subjective to us ; so also, is the Intelligence 
of the universe subjective to us; but the fact 
that this Intelligence works in the objective 
realm on the sure foundation of Principle be- 
speaks to us the fact that Principle is the Wis- 
dom of the mental world also. 

I am trying to give a concrete idea of Prin- 
ciple, and to show how surely we have inherited 



127 



the great Principle of creation from our Father. 
Just as we get from the earth all the elements 
that we need to maintain our bodies, so the 
great Intelligence has furnished us with faculties 
by which we may get from It all that is neces- 
sary for mental action, mental sustenance, and 
physical construction. 

These things being true, we ought to make 
use of them, and let Principle be translated into 
terms of health. 

The Principle of chemistry is infallible. If it 
is making uric acid in our bodies, there is a 
reason for its so doing. We have the voluntary 
and involuntary use of our Principle ; in our 
ignorance, we have unwittingly sent in wrong 
orders : let us learn to send right ones, and uric 
acid will no longer be formed. 

There are emotions that produce chemical 
poisons in the body. I was for years physician 
to the Chicago Foundling's Home, and have 
therefore had a great deal of experience concern- 
ing babies and children. It is not an uncommon 
event for a baby to be taken most seriously ill, 
after receiving nourishment from a mother who 
has been under the influence of untoward emo- 
tions ; indeed, there are not a few instances on 
record, where a child has fallen into convulsions 

128 



and died, immediately after having been nursed 
under such conditions. Rage has turned the 
milk to an acid amounting to rank poison, and 
this chemistry has taken place under the in- 
fluence of emotion, the mother being all uncon- 
scious of the sequence of events. 

You can see how, if a great emotion like anger 
can thus affect the milk, every shade of feeling 
must produce its own result in like manner. 
The trouble is in the metaphysical realm. To 
get rid of the uric acid should not be our primary 
object; the physicians, in their efforts to do this,, 
sometimes use such severe measures that the 
vitality of the patient has to pay the penalty.. 
Let us get rid of the metaphysical cause — the 
character of the emotion, either active in the con- 
scious mind, or latent in the soul-realm, which 
produced this foreign substance. This would 
constitute true healing. This idea, that man 
has received a scientific organization from Prin- 
ciple, ought to give courage and strength. If 
one set of emotions can keep a mother's milk 
healthy, and another turn it to poison, it is clear 
what must be done. Quit foolish ways ! 

Turning from the sciences to the arts or 
aesthetics, we find proportion expressing itself 
as form, color, sound, and so on. 



129 



When we look at the third and fourth charts, 
we see the personal man as we find him to-day; 
and when we look at the fourth chart, we are 
only seeing a word-picture of that which occupies 
the minds of many people every day. We have 
been treating it all with great respect; but what 
sort of mental pabulum can we derive from this 
kind of thing? 

Just as all the words on the first or ab- 
stract chart, being equal to the same thing, 
are equal to each other, so it is on the fourth 
chart. 

God is Spirit, and because God is All, there 
can be nothing in the universe that is not 
included in Spirit. 

We are accustomed to calling the objective 
side of existence "matter" ; and if there is any- 
thing in the universe which seems real, it is 
matter. "Matter," we say, as if it were a sub- 
stance and the antithesis to Spirit. We even 
say "material substance," which is an improper 
use of words. Spirit stands for Knowledge, 
and matter for elements. As Spirit is the Sub- 
stance of the universe, upon which it rests, 
there is no Principle in the universe called 
matter, for the Principle of matter is Spirit. 
In other words, there is no matter, if we mean 



130 



^ Clp ^ 



LIFE. 

SPIRIT. 

GOODNESS. 

SUBSTANCE. 

TRUTH. 

RIGHTNESS. 

WISDOM. 

FAITH. 

HARMONY. 

HEALTH. 

LOVE. 

OMNIPOTENCE. 

OMNISCIENCE. 

OMNIPRESENCE. 

HEAVEN. 

The personality of the divine ultimate man consists^ 
of a consciousness and self-consciousness reconstructed 
on the sound basis of his experiencing in emotion, in- 
telligence, and sensation, his divine inheritance repre- 
sented above. 

132 



^\HIL 4? , 



<*> 



<t> 



% 




VITALITY. 


DEATH. 


^OUL. MATTER. 


SOUL. MATTER 


VIRTUE. 


EVIL. 


FACT. 


DECEPTION. 


ACCURACY. 


ERROR. 


CORRECTNESS. 


MISTAKE. 


CLEVERNESS. 


FOOLISHNESS, 


CONFIDENCE. 


FEAR. 


CONCORD. 


DISCORD. 


EASE. 


DISEASE. 


ATTACHMENT. 


HATE. 


STRENGTH. 


WEAKNESS. 


LEARNING. 


IGNORANCE. 


PRESENCE. 


ABSENCE. 


HAPPINESS. 


HELL. 



o 



4> 



This chart represents what man ordinarily thinks 
himself to be in this life, a mixture of good and evil. He 
hopes that through trust in God and Christ, death will 
swallow up the evil, and that the good will then consti- 
tute his consciousness. It is to be readily seen what a 
narrow state of consciousness is left to him in this 
belief. All this is the positive and negative pole of the 
man according to sense. 



133 



by "is," IS-NESS, the Substance. For the 
sake of dealing with our environment in the 
objective world, we say that there exists as a 
fact that which we call matter; but a fact is 
never an Is-ness ; it exists only by virtue of the 
Principle underlying it. Apart from Principle, 
it does not and cannot exist; it is a condition, 
not a Substance. It is a state brought about 
by an active agent; this agent is the Is-ness of 
it. There is a great difference between fact and 
Truth. The former may appear to-day, and be 
out of existence to-morrow ; but Truth is eternal 
Principle, by which we are able to deal with 
facts scientifically, whether they be of environ- 
ment, or of consciousness. 

What we call matter is a fact of consciousness 
in the world of sense. It is a condition to be 
dealt with by the Principle — the active agent in 
all affairs of consciousness, as of body. 

Matter, then, having no existence as Principle, 
is, like any other condition, amenable to action 
from the grounds of Principle, whether it be a 
condition in the sensuous universe, or the par- 
ticular state of an individual living organism ; 
and, when thus dealt with through knowledge 
of the Principle, it becomes obedient to the 
ways of Principle. In other words, the erroneous 



135 



consciousness of illness can be dealt with by 
a knowledge of the Principle of Health; and 
in thus dealing with it, the body, the outermost 
state, will fall into line. What appears to us 
as matter, is an inherency in Principle. It is 
really a conditional form of the mental Sub- 
stance, made to appear apart from Principle by 
the transforming nature of the senses. It be- 
longs to the expression-realm of the mental 
Substance, Principle, in which action and result 
inhere. Principle, Action, and Result, are the 
triune God of man's mental realm : the matter 
of the sense-realm, corresponds to the third 
aspect of the Trinity, which we call expression, 
or result. The material universe and material 
man are neither of them illusions, but mankind 
is deluded concerning them. 

All that has Is-ness is Spirit. Principle, as 
the Substance of the universe, is self-contained. 
Since we have seen that the condition, matter, 
is capable of being dealt with, it only remains 
for man to learn to deal with it, and not by his 
false beliefs to allow it to deal with him. So 
long as we believe that we are subject to ma- 
terial conditions, they will have power over us, 
through our ignorance ; but we have the ability 
to govern them. We have but to develop our 

136 



working-power to control these conditions. It 
is a question of knowing. We have to free the 
mind from the belief that there is a power apart 
from the initial Power of the universe. What- 
ever appears to have power apart from the 
Principle of Goodness, only has it because of 
our ignorance of this great First, which, when 
Ave know It, will set us right. 

Once more, we do not say that this physical 
universe is not, but we do say that we have not 
seen it in the light of Truth. We are accus- 
tomed to look at it as a fundamental reality, 
whereas it is only a picture of Principle, cog- 
nized according to our plane of consciousness. 
Now we see through a glass darkly; but when 
we see face to face, matter and Spirit, body and 
mind, will be the same, all One, and that One, 
triune Principle. 

We do not, therefore, say that the body of 
the universe is an illusion and does not exist. 
We do not say that the body of man has no 
existence, but we do say that both are spiritual 
bodies, depicted in terms of sense, appearing as 
objects. The body of man in its entirety is the 
organ of consciousness. We have found that it 
is built and maintained by the subjective mind 
of man, the entity. 

U7 



The subjective mind is a purely mental organi- 
zation, possessing no organs of sense through 
which to perceive. It cognizes, therefore, only 
mental images and mental stuff. 

The senses of themselves have no imaging 
power. Therefore, all the phenomena that take 
place in the objective world are but a corre- 
spondence of that which is transpiring primarily 
in the mental realm of consciousness. 

Since the subjective intelligence has apparently 
constructed the body out of that which we, in 
objective existence, are accustomed to denomi- 
nate "material elements," and since this primary 
intelligence can only cognize mental, not sen- 
suous, substance, it then follows that the body 
of man and the body of the universe are pri- 
marily mental, and not material, and that all 
phenomena are mental, man and the universe 
being in exact correspondence, in sense, to that 
which is purely mental. 

Hence, it will be seen that the body with its 
systems must be the reproduction, in terms of 
eyesight and general sensation, of that which is 
purely mental, on the plane of primary, funda- 
mental consciousness; that the life, the mind, 
and the body, only appear to be a trinity of 
diverse "material," with varying destinies,-. 

138 



while in truth this holy trinity is a universe, a 
single whole, with a single destiny, having real 
existence in the mental realm of consciousness, 
together with Principle, its First. 

The scientific definition of matter is that it 
can be weighed, measured, multiplied, divided,, 
and that it occupies space. Therefore, it is. 
something which can be dealt with. Body is a. 
condition, and can be dealt with by the mind,, 
when the latter is consciously united to its 
First, but we have not regarded it thus. The 
body manages most people; it seems to say,. 
"I am tired," but it cannot be tired, it is inert- 
It is the feeling-nature that is tired. 

Matter is further defined as that which has the- 
properties of penetrability, divisibility, and in- 
ertia; therefore, science describes it as some- 
thing that is of itself impotent, always presup- 
posing intelligence to deal with it. Yet we let. 
it stand up and defy us ! These same scientists, 
who bravely declare that matter is inert and has 
no power, are laid low by a hard-boiled egg or 
a piece of veal. Suppose they began first to 
govern their mental condition, instead of the 
bodily one, which is the result of it? Let them 
learn to control their fear, worry, anger, 
jealousy, and discontent, and these innocent 

139 



edibles, as well as they themselves, would go 
on their way rejoicing. 

God is Life ; that is, there is no Power or 
Principle of death. 

Physical phenomena do not constitute Life, 
they are only the sign of Life. We have mis- 
taken the sign of Life for Life Itself. There is, 
then, no antithesis to Life; but, on the second- 
ary plane, death is regarded as such. Death 
has no place in the FIRST. Death did not 
inhere in the divine birthright of the first Adam ; 
it came as the result of experience, "the wages 
of sin." We have at our command the Prin- 
ciple of Knowledge and Power, by which we 
may change our conditions of "sin," and deal 
with those processes which culminate in death. 
First comes ignorant conduct in mind and heart, 
then follows disease, then death ; but this pro- 
gression is not irremediable, it is merely a con- 
dition. Change the ignorant conduct which 
brought about the condition, and the destructive 
processes will cease. 

There is no Reality in death, speaking in the 
ultimate, but there is much to be done before 
death will be abolished. It is said by St. Paul, 
"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is 
death." This saying is well put. The first 



140 



enemy, I may say, is ignorance, and through 
ignorance of our First we are continually sinning 
— missing the mark. When we have attained 
to a knowledge of this our God, we may say 
for a fact that there is no death. Until then it 
is wise to be loyal to Life, and to accord all 
power to that which is the great Norm of the 
universe — to that which is constructive — both in 
the mental and in the bodily sense, and never 
to bow down to, nor worship, any thing, or any 
condition, that is not of this Power. Let us 
first deal with the enemies that lead to death, 
such as anger, condemnation, and all other 
devitalizing emotions, and not spend too much 
time in denying this ultimate, thus prepos- 
terously setting out to deal with "the last 
enemy" first. Let us bravely meet the con- 
ditions as they come, giving the last enemy no 
further advantage. 

God is Good; therefore there is no Principle 
or Power of evil. 

Principle is One and is First. There is no 
other Principle than Omnipotence in the uni- 
verse. When the mind once settles the question 
that there cannot be two Firsts, the attention 
need no longer be divided between Good and evil. 
We cannot get on without Good or Principle, 



141 



which is constructive ; but we can get on with- 
out evil. The choice of which we shall accept 
should not be difficult. 

The theologians have been as illogical as the 
scientists. They have said that God is Omni- 
potent and Omnipresent, that there is no other 
Power, yet they have added, there is a devil. 
They found something they did not like work- 
ing in them, and so they called it the devil, and 
allowed it to contradict all their theological 
statements; whereas it arose from their believing 
in the evidence of sense, rather than in the one 
Power which they had postulated. No doubt 
they quote Jesus as authority for their devil, 
but let us remember that Jesus constantly 
adapted His words to the understanding of His 
hearers, speaking "in parables," because of the 
blindness of their hearts. There is that in 
human experience which has to be reckoned 
with, and which may as well be called "devil ;"' 
we shall see later what this Apollyon is. We 
can invent physical and psychical terms for the 
devil, but we cannot find any under-lying Power 
representing the devil; any First. It is another 
name for the ignorance of man. Evil or devil 
has no Is-ness, in precisely the same sense in 
which matter has no Is-ness. Matter, as such,, 

142 



independent of Spirit, is an objective, physical 
term ; and evil and ignorance are psychical terms 
for one and the same thing. Evil, or the devil, 
is a name for a condition of disturbance. I 
understand that one of the Hebrew words for 
evil means a condition of fermentation, disin- 
tegration, and disorder, out of which is to come 
order and beauty. We have at our command 
the Principle of power by which we can change 
these conditions of so-called evil. Ignorance is 
an evil condition of the human being, leading 
him into all sorts of difficulties, causing him to 
experience vagaries of feeling, which seem to 
have reality at the back of them, but which a 
little knowledge on higher lines puts for ever 
out of commission. 

There is a time, during the construction of a 
machine, when everything is in a state of dis- 
order. Man, so far as his consciousness is con- 
cerned, is in an unfinished state; but the intent 
is that the ultimate should be order and beauty, 
and this is brought about by man always co- 
operating with the Principle, rather than with 
the condition which he calls evil. 

What, then, is evil? It is one of those nega- 
tives, one of those vagaries of the imagination, 
that lay hold of the ignorant. It is a delirium 

143 



of the mind, based upon the postulate that 
power lies in the conditional realm ; the error 
of the premise appears in the condition. Evil 
is man's state while he does not feel in his heart 
in accord with Eternal Truth, whether he per- 
ceives this Truth in his brain, or no. It is 
man's state while there is a discrepancy between 
his intellectual perception of Eternal Truth, 
and such permeation of his feeling-nature with 
the desire to live it, as shall enable him to do so. 

There are those who have a keen intellectual 
perception of what is good, and who desire to 
live it, but they are continually failing to do so, 
because, in the ignorance of their feeling-nature, 
they desire even more that which evil will bring 
them, and which they are deceived for the mo- 
ment into thinking worth possessing. 

Neither the good nor the evil of human con- 
ception counts for anything; they are merely 
states of consciousness that have to pass. There 
is only THE GOOD, and what we call good 
and evil in this present condition is just the 
positive and negative of human consciousness — 
intelligence and ignorance in the sensuous life 
— both of which must give way to the ultimate, 
the perfect consciousness of the One, THE 
GOOD. 



144 



Good IS, and all else has to go: but we cannot 
take the evil and replace it with Good all at 
once; iri our present state of development we are 
not at all times able to realize the Good. 

I doubt the wisdom of constantly affirming 
"all is good," because we are apt to deceive 
ourselves in that particular, until we know that 
which alone is GOOD, that which abides and 
is true. Let us transpose the words, and we 
have "The Good is All." There is no possible 
sophistry in this. The deception of those things 
which seem so beautiful for the moment, is often 
greater than the deception on the evil side of the 
equation. 

We know that, as we think, so it is to us; 
there is, for instance, no power in a counterfeit 
note; the only power it has is that which we 
give to it by the ignorant belief which leads us 
to accept it, though that may suffice to ruin us. 

God is Substance ; there is no Power or Prin- 
ciple of deception. 

We want not only to perceive the Truth, but 
to put our perception into practice in the daily 
living, and thus alter conditions which have 
been taking people out of the world for so 
long. Such conditions, based upon false pre- 
mises, are a deception; but there is a realm 



T 45 



within us where there is no deception. Let us 
awaken to it. 

God is Truth ; there is no Power or Principle 
of error. 

If we look at some of the lower animals, which 
have but a very limited range of perception, we 
cannot imagine that they know very much about 
us. We must be almost a complete blank to 
them, because we do not come within their scale 
of cognition. Thus also, there is that which is 
largely in blank to us, the great Principle of 
Omniscience. We cannot comprehend It in our 
present state of development, and when we try 
to put as much of It as we have grasped into 
terms of sense, we can only express a modicum 
of what It is. This great Substance does not 
relate Itself directly to time or space, but we are 
able to see that It IS, though It seems to be an 
abstraction to us on our first awakening to It. 
Let us now break our shell of sense, and get a 
little realization of the Truth within. 

We spend more time maundering over error, 
than in contemplating what is true and splendid. 
There are many who on a large white space 
can only see the one black spot, being so hyp- 
notized by it, that they can see nothing else. In 
like manner, we pay more heed to one erroneous 

146 



condition, than to a perfect carnival of con- 
structive facts. So long as we are in a condition 
of not knowing God, we are in a condition of 
error. As soon as Truth is revealed in the mind, 
error no longer appears, but really nothing is 
gone, because error is nothing in itself, while 
Truth is All, and upholds Its correspondence in 
condition. 

God is Rightness ; there is no Power or Prin- 
ciple of mistake. 

There is no Reality in mistake, yet we make 
mistakes all the time, and nothing is accom- 
plished. It is like jumping up and down in the 
same place instead of progressing. We feel our 
mistakes very deeply, and so long as this feeling 
obtains, we have lost the idea of our Rightness. 
We should make a consciousness of righteous- 
ness. "The righteous also shall hold on his 
way, and he that hath clean hands shall wax 
stronger and stronger." We must learn to get 
our minds away from error, and begin to deal 
with conditions from the standpoint of Rightness. 

God is Wisdom; there is no Power or Prin- 
ciple of foolishness. 

Yet the soul is full of ignorance and foolish- 
ness, and like a phonographic reel, it repeats 
the records which have been made. Thus we 



147 



function, over and over again, the experiences 
of our ancestors; measles, whooping cough, 
tempers, and so forth, come reeling off our wax 
cylinders as they did off those of our forefathers ; 
and unless we change our consciousness about 
such things, and get some normal healthful ex- 
periences in their place, these elementals will 
obtain for ever; but there is no Substance behind 
them. Let us learn Wisdom, and they will ob- 
tain no more. 

God is Faith; there is no Power or Principle 
in fear. 

What then is fear, and who created it? It is 
a superstition; men and women are bound by 
it. It is not a reality, yet all bow down to it. 
Fear is faith in the wrong thing. Fear is 
stepping off, where there is no platform to step 
on to. There is nothing constructive in it. It 
has no Being. When we take hold of Faith, 
then we dismiss our fear; but the faith of 
human consciousness, and the fear of human 
consciousness, both have to go, because they 
are only blind things. Our faith has really been 
belief. There is nothing to fear for one who 
knows Truth. A man has nothing to fear in a 
mathematical test, if he knows. If he does not, 
then he fears. In other words, he puts his faith 

148 



in something that is not enduring, his condi- 
tion, instead of in his Substance, Knowledge. 

God is Harmony; there is no Power or Prin- 
ciple of discord. 

Discord has no Is-ness, but there is a state 
of consciousness which we call discord; two 
minutes of that will produce more emotion 
than an hour's harmony; the mind is enslaved 
by something that has no ground in Truth. It 
has no ground in Principle, yet it fills our 
horizon. 

God is Health; there is no Power or Prin- 
ciple of disease. 

Health and disease are terms used in the 
world of condition to denote polar opposites;, 
but disease has no Is-ness. God is hidden to 
the sensuous being. Just as electricity lay- 
hidden for ages, but was there from the be- 
ginning, so the Principle of Health has ever 
been present with us. The time has come when 
we have discovered It, and know that It is. 
nothing less than God Almighty within us,, 
related directly, though as yet unconsciously^ 
to the mind. When the mind is consciously 
attached to This, disease is impossible. When 
man believes in the Health-Principle within him 
as vividly as he has believed in the omnipresence 

149 



of disease-entities, there will be nothing but 
health for him. ^ 

God is Love ; there is no Power or Principle 
of hate. 

From the ideal standpoint we say that love is 
the greater, yet practically, discord, or hate, 
looms more largely in our field of vision. When 
we realize its nothingness, hate will no longer 
exist. When every one sees through the eyes 
of the Principle of Knowledge, no condition of 
hate will obtain. Man has to build into his 
consciousness a higher knowing, and so proceed 
to perfect knowledge of Truth. 

Let us lay hold of the main idea. We do not 
deny matter or any of these negatives, as con- 
ditions of consciousness. We simply deny that 
they have any power at all in the mind that 
knows. We deny their right to obtain and 
function in our consciousness. When we see 
spiritually, we shall see "matter" as it is, and 
it will mean to us something quite different from 
that which it means to us now. 



i =;o 



VIII. 

WE have seen what we are from the mental 
standpoint, and what we appear to be. 
Subjectively we are perfect, but we lack know- 
ledge of this perfection of our true selves. 
We have a certain knowledge of the race, and 
of the race-transactions and tendencies, which 
we can follow while we know no better; and we 
have our own experiences added to that of the 
race. We carry all the past with us ; the past 
of race-records, the past of emotion, and the 
past of sensation. Out of all this is germinated 
thought, and the soul is the germinating-place 
where thoughts are born. The soul is the store- 
house of experience, and the soul builds body. 
Soul in reality was once thought; the experi- 
ences of the past have gone down into the 
under-consciousness, and have become soul. 
Though they appear to be out of sight for a 
while, they are not so in reality, for they are 
incarnated in the body. So that we find written 
on the form of a man a register of thought and 
feeling; and more especially in the face, be- 
cause there we have the most extensive and 
most sensitive nerve-supply in the whole body- 
shell, there the circulation is most abundant, 



I5i 



and there especially is depicted the play of 
emotion, which really is the subjective sculptor 
chiselling out from day to day its own likeness. 
We have in the past practically held the belief 
that disease is as much an entity, as man him- 
self. There are those here to-day who believe 
that they are victims of certain diseases ; in that 
case, experiences which have no origin except 
in the human race must have had a steady in- 
fluence on their lives. The fact is, we have all 
been victims of a false idea, a race-superstition,, 
that objects and elements have power of their 
own, apart from the First; the power that be- 
longs to Principle alone we have delegated to 
matter, to evil, to devil. The mental organiza- 
tion, functioning from these false premises, has 
created to itself conditions of an opposite nature 
to the Truth, and these we have properly termed 
disease. 

Disease, then, though something to be 
reckoned with, is as much a vagary as are the 
premises upon which it is founded, namely, an 
intelligence and power opposed to that of the 
One Good, or Principle. 

We have seen ourselves, from the stand-point 
of the self-evident, being made in the image and 
likeness of Principle; and we have seen the 



152 



likeness of any experience we have had worked 
out faithfully in form and feeling by the subjec- 
tive faculties. 

Now we come to the place where the line of 
demarcation must be made, for power lies with 
the mind, not with the experiences associated 
with the mind. It is in the mental realm that 
we lay hold of power; and this brings us straight 
to the power of the word — man's word. 

In the Scriptures a good deal is said about 
the Word. "In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
God." In our childish days when we learned 
these verses, doubtless we had little idea of their 
meaning. "In the beginning was the Word" 
— in the beginning was Omniscience. That 
which we call a word is nothing unless it have 
meaning. We have to know this meaning; 
Knowledge was with God, and Knowledge, to 
reduce all to its lowest terms, was God. 

There are words on three planes ; we have 
those based on fundamental Truth representing 
God as Principle, and such words are spiritual 
words. We have also those relating to ideas 
concerning objects, which are psychical words ; 
and lastly, we have words applied directly to 
objects, which are physical words. Besides 

153 



this, some words have three meanings, first the 
purely spiritual meaning referring directly to 
Being, the Fundamental Intelligence; secondly, 
the psychical, relating directly to the idea before 
it is worked out in the elements; and, thirdly, 
the physical, applying directly to objects. Their 
individual significance must be determined by 
the context. Principle has usually been em- 
ployed only in the psychical and physical senses, 
whereas, by virtue of its derivation, it is deeply 
spiritual. The spiritual meaning appertains to 
Principle, having its "standing-under" or Sub- 
stance in Truth. 

The Word of God, or the Spiritual Word, 
is proved powerful when put into action — 
"Through faith we understand that the worlds 
were framed by the Word of God" : It shows 
itself in objective form. Because we are sons of 
the Father, our word is omnipotent with us, and 
decides exactly what is to be our position, and 
the condition of our consciousness. 

Jeremiah said, "every man's word shall be 
his burden." Perhaps we do not all see exactly 
how that happens. The "word" is not the 
mere hieroglyph ; it must be full of soul, and 
have the flash of emotion that is born of the 
necessity of the soul to express itself. This 



154 



emotion, this meaning, is what makes a word 
a word; whether right or wrong, foolish or wise, 
its coming right out of the heart is the power 
of it. If we are repeating a number of words 
with no understanding or meaning, we cannot 
call those words a burden, they are nothing. 

That which expresses mere abstract thought, 
or idealism without feeling, is not a word. 
There is a good deal of writing of this kind. 
We are carried away by the beauty and ring of 
the words, by the fine diction; and we say, 
"How lovely!" but we are only hypnotized; 
it amounts to nothing; it awakens no funda- 
mental feeling, only a superficial sentiment. 
These are not words, they are only imitations. 

"Every man's word shall be his burden. " 
This does not mean that because a man has got 
into trouble he must have sat down and said or 
thought that he was going to have a disagree- 
able time; no one in his right mind does that. 
It is not necessary that a man should expect to 
have certain diseases in order to contract them, 
but disease comes rather from the general cha- 
racter of his thinking, and if this be of a nega- 
tive nature, there follows a cataclysm, possibly 
typhoid fever, or some other disease, according 
to prevailing conditions. This may be an effort 



155 



of consciousness to throw off the worthless think- 
ing of years. A man may say, "I did not 
think of having that disease" ; no, nor did he 
think of God the Father Almighty; what did he 
think of? He was anxious about his affairs, had 
been angry over some injury, or entertaining 
some other untoward emotion; this will not pro- 
duce beauty in the body, will not take scientific 
constructive form in him. It may construct un- 
scientifically, may produce a tumor, for in- 
stance, for that kind of word, or emotion, has 
to express itself also. Fear, trouble, anger, 
will show in the secretions and metabolism of 
the body; chemical changes are continually 
taking place, and sooner or later the crash 
comes. Lucky the man yielding to such emo- 
tions, if he swiftly have a series of acute disasters 
to turn him from his foolishness — bilious at- 
tacks, for instance; for unless something of 
that sort happens, he will in course of time lie 
down with serious disease, or will become a 
hypochondriac, nervous dyspeptic, or something 
equally disagreeable. 

The power of the word — of the thought — is 
wonderful, so operative, so telling, that we can 
think ourselves into any kind of condition. We 
can get a sudden shock on hearing certain news, 

156 



which may not be true, or may be meant for 
-another person; but if we believe it is for us, 
down we go. The power that laid us low was 
not in the telegram, nor in the person who wrote 
it. That person had no power over us; we 
accepted the news as a disaster, and it became 
one to us ; the power was in us, and our organ- 
ization carried it out. Every kind of sickness 
comes from some such shock, or from the gradual 
accumulation in the feeling-nature of all manner 
of false race or personal imaginings. Con- 
sciousness is sensitive to that which is akin to 
it. It draws, like the magnet, according to its 
own quality. Consciousness in the soul is latent 
feeling, latent tendency. It is easy to under- 
stand how, unconsciously to ourselves, the 
peculiar nature of this under-feeling will catch 
at that in its environment which is of the same 
character, and work it out in active feeling and 
bodily form, in the way of fitful health or dis- 
ease, happiness or misery. If the general ten- 
dency of our under-consciousness is optimistic, 
constructive, if the tendency is to confidence 
in that which is normal, that which is good, we 
need not fear to be in the presence of those of 
opposite tendencies. We need not fear epide- 
mics, or any of the ordinary calamities which 

157 



befall people of opposite bent. It behoves us 
to see that our feeling be re-born of a higher 
quality, that we raise the potency of it through 
a right understanding of ourselves, no longer 
continuing to be mere victims of our sensuous 
environment. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect 
peace, whose mind is stayed on thee." 

Now the words, or to employ the metaphysical 
term, the thoughts we entertain every day, are 
being stored up according to our belief in them, 
and as we accept or refuse them, so is our con- 
sciousness being formed; it is this kind of thing, 
together with our working-power, Original Life, 
which determines what kind of body is being 
formed for us. 

There are people who think that they are 
quite unable to stand a temperature of 20° below 
zero, Fahrenheit. If they hold this opinion, 
and with it go into such cold, they will probably 
suffer for it ; but normal people know quite well 
that they can with impunity remain for hours in 
this temperature if the mind be positive. Al- 
though scientists tell us that there is enough air 
in this room for us to live upon for a week, 
there are some who think that if there are six 
people in it for an hour, and no open window, 
the room is "stuffy." Or, if it is above 6o°, 

158 



that it is hot. What is hot? The person; the 
stuffiness is in him ; it is the education in his 
soul, the superstition. There are those who 
come for spiritual healing, and who need it more- 
over, yet the first thing they do before they think 
they can receive any good, is to open the window 
on the others. This is a disease. I will tell 
you how it arises. 

The sympathetic system provides heat. It is 
the servant of man. If someone thinks the air 
stuffy in a room with half-a-dozen people in it, 
so will it be to that one; at a later date, when 
he has overcome that belief, the mind will rise to 
a positive state, and the sensation of stuffiness 
will not obtain. Some people think 8o° in the 
shade hot, and so it is to people of ordinary 
vitality in this country; but those who live 
habitually in it, are unhappy when the tem- 
perature is lower. Our organization, with its 
education merely of past experience, is dictating 
whether it shall be hot or cold to us. Let us 
reform our ideas, and declare that we do not 
propose to be led by the vagaries of those who 
have gone before, of those who are around us, 
or even by our own feelings. But let us take 
up our dominion, knowing that heat and cold 
are relative terms, that our sensations have been 



159 



hitherto determined by our belief in conditions, 
rather than by faith in our own divine birthright, 
and that knowledge of Truth will set us free 
from being under this belief of subjection to the 
elements. 

The sympathetic system takes its orders from 
the imagination and works them out in body. 
Chemistry, as we find it in condition, is negative, 
something already in action. The principle of 
chemistry itself is positive; it is the Subjective 
Intelligence of the universe manifesting in the 
elements, for the purpose of working out an 
elemental condition. Let us clearly understand 
that the principle of chemistry is Subjective 
Intelligence, pure and simple, and as we know 
It in relation to the elements, It is positive. 
That which has already been worked out by It, 
is negative. Thus we have the principle of 
chemistry in man directly related to his mind 
as a mental Substance. It is the Principle, 
working simply through his mind, not known 
as chemistry in that realm, but carrying out the 
office of chemistry in the elements. Now we 
recognize this Intelligence-Principle as directly 
related to the mind, but we have not recognized 
that the same Principle of Intelligence, as related 
to the elements, is working out in the body, 

1 60 



automatically to us, a condition corresponding; 
to our thoughts and feelings, by the operation 
of the law of the subjective mind in its relation 
to soul-life. In the body we observe the positive 
chemical action which bespeaks Principle. Let 
us suppose the mind is confronted with the 
chemistry of conditions, as for instance the foul 
air of a room over-peopled. In this case the 
man, instead of weakly falling into line with this- 
condition, and thereby becoming subject to \t r 
should rise to a positive state, and recognize the 
dominion of his Principle over any conditions, 
which It has created. He should determine to 
take advantage of his power within, actively 
realizing the fact that the mind has its positive 
Principle working with it at first hand. Rousing 
himself to the acute consciousness of this fact 
is equivalent to putting in an order to his Life- 
Principle to work out a chemistry in body which 
shall correspond to his changed state of mind — 
from alliance with conditions to alliance with the 
Principle. It is the office of the subjective in- 
telligence within to carry out such orders, and 
when this obtains, the man is actually raised in 
his physical consciousness, and in the chemistry 
of his body, to a point where union with his; 
abnormal environment is impossible, and he is 

.161 



rendered immune from that which before was 
noxious. We know that one element added to, 
or taken from, a chemical combination will change 
it from a deadly poison to a perfectly innocuous 
substance, and this is what actually may happen 
when a man rises superior in his realization to 
his mental or physical environment. "If they 
drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them." 

How many have I seen who have largely 
emancipated themselves from the dominion of 
the elements, thus exemplifying in their persons 
the victorious power of the word, the thought ! 

When a man is continually overcome by the 
elements, it signifies that his "word" is born of 
race or personal experience ; but his word born 
of the spirit will deliver him from such bondage. 
Let him take higher ground than the race has 
taken, and behold, he is above the elements ! 
St. Paul realized this, he said, "Even so we, 
when we were children, were in bondage under 

the elements of the world But now, 

after that ye have known God, or rather are 
known of God, how turn ye again to the weak 
and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire 
again to be in bondage?" 

The Principle of consciousness must ever 
attend man — whether he be on the heights of his 

162 



God-likeness or in the depths of subjection to 
sense and race experience — to work out his 
spiritual illumination or his sensuous beliefs, 
whichever obtains, into self-conscious feeling. 
This Principle being First — whether manifesting 
as consciousness, chemistry, or body — is above 
the elements, above conditions of environment. 
It, however, subjects Itself to the use of man. 
He calls It into scientific action in accordance 
with the idea that he holds at the time ; the 
potency of the idea, be it vitalizing or devitalizing, 
is then rendered into its exact equivalent in feel- 
ing and in form. Conscious union with his First 
frees man from the conditions of his environ- 
ment; union with his conditions puts him into 
bonds. We know that we can dictate to the 
elements, for they are subject to the mind; but 
not by effort of will alone can we command 
them ; we have to come into touch with Principle ; 
then we shall no longer say that fire and water 
have more power than man, the likeness of God. 

That we may realize the power of thought, 
and at least one of the great channels through 
which it functions in soul and body life, I wish 
to digress and take a lesson from the body. 

Closely connected, because of its office, with 
the faculties of the mind — perception, imagina- 

163 



tion, reason, judgment, will, and so forth — and 
arising from the floor of the fourth ventricle o£ 
the cranial brain, is a nerve which starts as a 
trunk-line and distributes itself in branches. 
The first branch supplies the glottis and larynx,, 
where the metaphysical man — the silent partner 
— gives to the physical -and conscious man con- 
trol of the vocal organs for voice-production,, 
through those nerves which govern the contrac- 
tion of the muscles, and which vary the tension, 
of the vocal chords. It also conveys to the 
conscious mind the sensation of the state of 
these muscles. This nerve stands as a sentinel 
to protect the larynx from foreign bodies, and 
also influences deglutition. The trunk-line passes 
on then to the thorax and distributes itself 
throughout the lungs, sending also a most im- 
portant branch to the heart, after which it pierces 
the diaphragm, where it is denuded of its in- 
sulating sheath, becoming thereby a sympathetic 
nerve. It now descends to a point along the 
great aorta just at the back of the stomach, 
where it joins two other sympathetic nerves,, 
which, like itself, have terminated in ganglia — 
brain-cells of very high power. These three 
nerves form themselves into a ganglionic mass,, 
about the size of a sixpence; and this, you will 

164 



remember, has been described as the abdominal 
brain. This primary, vital, or soul-brain stands 
at the head of soul-life, and, therefore, of body- 
life, bearing the same relation to the cranial 
brain, or conscious life, that the light of the 
sun bears to the moon. This silent partner, 
while owning the conscious man root and 
branch, still allows him to fancy that he him- 
self is the Great Mogul, until he discovers his 
real position. I have been most particular to 
describe the origin and distribution of this, the 
vagus, or pneumogastric nerve, that we may 
realize what a tremendous factor this mechanism 
may be, and is, in the affairs of both the upper 
and under consciousness, arising, as it does, 
within the cranial brain, and terminating in the 
soul-brain, where it holds the balance of power 
in it, and, therefore, in the whole ganglionic 
system of soul and body brains. 

You will see how intimate is the connection 
between the organ of conscious thought — the 
cranial brain, and the vital brain — the organ 
of soul-consciousness, the stuff out of which 
thoughts are born, to say nothing of its being 
the citadel of soul-life. 

The branch of the vagus given off to the 
heart becomes the inhibitory nerve of the heart. 

165 



The feeling of the conscious man is automati- 
cally conveyed to the heart-muscle, and depicted 
in the conduct of the heart. This silent com- 
munication going on constantly keeps the cir- 
culatory system in close touch with the conscious 
mind, duplicating the emotions in terms of heart 
vibration, then through a system of so-called 
vaso-motor nerves which regulate the calibre of 
the blood-vessels and govern the tension of their 
walls, the whole circulatory system is affected 
more or less by emotions which are taking place 
in the conscious man; and this is only one of 
the routes by which emotion is conveyed from 
self-consciousness to soul-life. So we see that 
there is not only a direct connection with the 
soul-processes through the abdominal brain, 
but also with the distribution of the physical 
vital fluid through the heart, and thus through 
the whole bodily system. 

A constant record of our thoughts is being 
kept in terms of latent emotion, and the vital 
commerce taking place between body and mind, 
and mind and body, are constantly being inter- 
changed for purposes of experience in the soul, 
and incarnation in the body. 

All diseases are caused, and all cures are 
made, whether by drugs or by mind, through 

166 



movements taking place in the emotional system, 
not necessarily through conscious emotion, but 
through the latent feeling, or soul-nature. 

Every drug that one takes produces feeling 
of some sort. Some drugs produce primarily 
sensation, from mere unpleasantness to violent 
pain and distress ; push the dose far enough, and 
they will produce tremendous emotion. Others 
produce primarily emotion — apprehension, fear, 
rage ; push these drugs far enough, and they 
will also produce sensation. The apparent 
power of the drug lies in the feeling that it is 
able to produce. Take, for instance, arsenic, 
which produces a great feeling of restlessness and 
intense weakness, not only a sensational, but a 
vital weakness, which is evidenced in a very 
weak and high pulse; it also produces a 
terrible fear and anxiety of mind; it affects the 
moral nature of a man as well as the physical 
processes; it bears a certain relation to the 
consciousness of a man, in his present state of 
education. A man's emotions depend upon his 
education; and the sub-conscious emotion, or 
the soul-feelings, are made up of education from 
past experience. Change this education of the 
past, as to the power that the conscious mind 
has to defend itself from untoward influences, 

167 



to the education of to-day, and the drug has by 
so much lost its power to disturb the soul-life, 
and therefore, the body-life. Drugs act first 
on that consciousness which has to do with 
body-life, and, through the consciousness, on 
the bodily particles. But the action of a drug 
upon the consciousness is only a fiction. A 
drug is a foreign substance with no power of its 
own behind it. There is a more intelligent way 
of acting upon the emotions than through the 
material elements or drugs. This way is through 
education in the higher way of living, through 
the higher and diviner emotions that can be 
excited by high and true ideals, by moral 
courage, and by confidence in that which is 
normal, rather than that which is abnormal — 
confidence in the Principle of Health, rather 
than in the condition of illness. So, as it is 
always desirable to affect the emotions for heal- 
ing, it is best for a man either to deal with his 
own consciousness, or to have it appealed to 
directly through another's knowledge of higher 
matters, by means of the sympathy that exists 
between one in an exalted state of consciousness, 
and another who desires to attain to that state, 
from a condition of fear and misery. Certain 
drugs, in the present state of the human race, 

1 68 



we will say, affect the heart, and when the heart 
is affected by these drugs, the conscious mind 
is perturbed in one way or another. On the 
other hand, let the conscious mind become per- 
turbed purely within itself, and behold, we have 
the same phenomena taking place in the heart. 
Why, then, should one resort to these fictions 
which in their action only tend to perpetuate 
the man's helplessness, the idea of his inferiority 
and subjection to the chemical elements? Why 
should not he, whose intellectual faculties are 
connected with the Infinite Intelligence, have 
power over them, through the realization in 
higher emotion of this great connection. 

Again, one may be affected' by a draught of 
cold air to the point of shivering. This is an 
instance of sensation brought about by external 
conditions. This sensation, perceived possibly 
by the sub-conscious mind alone, may cause 
such violent action in the consciousness within, 
as to bring about a decided congestion or inflam- 
mation, and, under certain conditions, severe 
illness. This, in turn, will reflect upon the emo- 
tional system, producing restlessness, anxiety of 
mind, and intense foreboding, the train of symp- 
toms passing, from the sensational, inward to 
the emotional system. On the other hand, with 

169 



all external conditions normal and comfortable,, 
a man may suddenly, from some internal cause,, 
or external happening, experience violent emo- 
tion, fear, anxiety, restlessness, foreboding; and 
this psychical disturbance, translating itself into 
bodily terms, will result in chill, congestion, or 
inflammation, exactly as in the former case, but 
brought on directly by the abnormal state of 
mind. The physical result is the same in both 
cases. Both states could have been avoided if 
the man had only known his own power within 
to govern himself, and choose what emotions 
he should have, and what sensations he should 
allow; indeed, if in his sub-consciousness more 
normal experiences had obtained, such conscious, 
emotions would never have occurred. 

States of consciousness, obtaining in soul-life,, 
are making either for a condition of health or a 
condition of illness, according to their general 
trend from day to day. Movements taking place 
in the under-consciousness, representative of 
courage, faith, and of that which is normal, can 
never bring about a state of illness; but move- 
ments, involuntary to the conscious man, taking 
place in the under-consciousness, instigated from 
the negative side of emotional life, can only 
produce disease of one sort or another. All 



170 



disease is caused first by disturbance in the un- 
der-consciousness. 

Although the disturbance may take its origin 
in the conscious mind, the under-consciousness 
must first be reached and perturbed, before any 
change in the vital action can take place. There 
is that which corresponds to poison in the 
emotional realm. A certain class of emotions 
act as poison in the blood and vitiate the 
secretions. Whether these emotions are caused 
directly by the mind itself, or whether they are 
produced by reflex action through some irritat- 
ing chemical substance, the result is the same. 

The race has had experience enough in un- 
toward emotions, of which the soul of man is a 
record. This record stands as an invitation for 
each individual to indulge in more of the same 
brand. The involuntary beliefs of the man ex- 
isting in the soul-consciousness have arisen from 
transactions of the race and of his near heredity.. 
These in the particular individual render him 
liable to a certain class of emotions, and also^ 
render him sensitive to external conditions, on 
account of which these experiences are supposed 
to come. So that a record of disease is likely to 
be repeated in the self-consciousnss, unless the 
man has come into more light concerning his, 

171 



true nature, and has written a new record of 
conviction and experience in his own under- 
consciousness, by his behavior in conscious life. 
I repeat, this tendency for race-transactions in 
emotion to duplicate themselves is instanced in 
the "automatic" diseases of childhood — whoop- 
ing cough, measles, mumps, and more serious 
affairs. 

The earthquakes in man's consciousness must 
have their effect on nature ; the power of con- 
scious thinking is what has given him his 
dominion, positive or negative, voluntary or in- 
voluntary, over all the earth. But he, whose 
mastery sufficed for the building of the pyramids, 
falls prone and dies in the midst of it! There 
are trees with a record of five thousand years, 
which, though half-burned or hacked away, still 
live erect, yet man goes down. A tree belongs 
to rather a high order of organization, but it 
has not the apparatus for thinking like a man. 
Man is greater than it, yet while it stands, he 
falls. 

There are men working in the furnaces of 
England who endure 350° of dry heat, and yet 
when we go into a Turkish bath of 150°, at first 
we are nearly overwhelmed, and when we find 
ourselves for the first time in the 200° room, we 

172 



escape from it as soon as possible. Formerly it 
was held to be a scientific fact that man could 
endure no more than 190° dry heat. Later on 
the limit was fixed at 237°. The men who fixed 
these limits lacked experience, for all this time 
the foundry-hands were enduring 350°. Then 
there arose a Frenchman "Chabert, the fire- 
king,"* who proved how much more a man 
might safely brave; for, beginning with 250°, 
he raised the standard to 350°, 450°, then 550°, 
and finally 6oo°. That is enough to burn up 
an ox; yet there he stood in the midst of it, 
a master, king over the fire, demonstrating his 
dominion. 

It is a well-known custom of the South Sea 
Islanders, savage fanatics though they be, to 
heat an enclosed space till the stones are red-hot, 
when twenty or thirty of them, joining hands, 
with a "master" among them, will walk around 
over those stones scathless, although immediately 
afterwards they are able to roast an ox in the 
same place. This is the power of the word. 
We have heard of the power of the word, both 
in construction and in destruction. It is abun- 
dantly exemplified among the unintelligent and 
uneducated. In Honolulu, before white people 

*Vide Sander's Question Compends, "Essentials of Physiology." 

*73 



had control of the country, it was a common 
practice for any native who desired the death of 
an enemy, to go to a "cahuna" or native doctor, 
and say, "I want you to pray so and so to death."" 
The "cahuna" then sent word to the victim,. 
"You will die at a certain time," and so strong 
was the popular belief in the power of his word, 
that at the stated hour the man died. It is told 
in Honolulu that there was once an Irishman 
against whom one of the natives had a deadly 
grudge. The "cahuna," at the instance of this 
man, informed the Irishman that he was to die 
the next day; but when the allotted time had 
expired, the Irishman, having declined to die,, 
sent word to the "cahuna," saying, "Now I 
will pray you to death," with the result that the 
man promptly succumbed to his own belief in 
the Irishman's word. 

These things are not confined to Honolulu;, 
it is perfectly common in Fiji for one to say, 
"I will die to-morrow at such a time," and 
when the time comes, the man dies. Why does 
the word have power thus? It is because these 
people believe what they are told. We may see 
this thing enacted nearer home by means of 
hypnotism, though not, of course, in such ex- 
treme form. It is suggested by the operator ta 



i?4 



the subject, "you are ill," and immediately he 
is ill, and of the kind of illness specified. An 
experiment was once made upon a criminal. 
He was told that he would be bled to death; 
his eyes were bandaged, and warm water was, 
allowed to trickle down his arm, with the result 
that he died — died of warm water, without so- 
much as a pin-prick ! 

In Dr. Tuke's book, "Influence of Mind over 
the Body in the Cause and Cure of Disease," 
will be found hundreds of cases illustrating what 
the mind can do with the body in this way. The 
body without vitality is nothing. Vitality with- 
out the brain-consciousness is nothing. Since 
the vital brain functions feeling, and the cranial 
brain thought, and since thought is born in the 
brain out of sub-conscious feeling, all power,, 
humanly speaking, lies in the feeling; a man's 
word, then, represents the spirit of his feeling at 
the time. His working-power at the moment 
is determined by his exaltation or depression, by 
the quality and intensity of his conviction. 

In the ancient Scriptures it is written, "as he 
thinketh in his heart, so is he," and thus we find 
it. If we think rank delusion, and believe it, it 
will obtain in our consciousness. Why not 
think Truth? Why not think something to 



175 



make us comfortable? Why dwell on unwhole- 
some conditions, when the great Principle is 
with us, with which we can determine such con- 
ditions as we desire? 

The faculty of imagination is a noble one, yet 
it is often spoken of disparagingly. "It is all 
imagination," it is said derisively, though the 
imagining faculty is the pilot faculty of the soul, 
and the acceptance or rejecton of an imagina- 
tion may mean either life or death. Either by 
our common sense, or by our knowledge of 
Truth, we are able to gauge the value of what 
imagination presents to us. 

We have had a Son of Man who stood up 
and declared himself to be the Son of God, and 
us to be his brethren. We, then, are Sons of 
God, though not living up to our privileges. 
Jesus we look upon as an ultimated man, having 
dominion ; divine in His own consciousness, not 
only in perception, but also in realization. Jesus 
was the product of the Word, He was the Word. 
He was man as we are potentially. We have 
been taught that Jesus was God. Personality 
cannot be God, but it can be at one with God. 
Cause can never be effect; man must ever be 
effect, and God, Cause. Principle cannot turn 
and be that which It creates, although Its creation 

176 



is an integer of Itself. Jesus was the man spoken 
of in the first chapter of Genesis as being made 
in the image and likeness of God, ultimated and 
concreted in character, consciousness, and flesh; 
He who behaved in a God-like manner, mani- 
fested the dominion of His most High In- 
heritance, and now stands to the race as a 
sample Man. When we say that He was a man, 
we do not mean it in the sense that He was just a 
human being, a good man. We do not hold 
that; we say that Jesus manifested in His per- 
sonality the modes of Being; He manifested 
Knowledge on whatever plane He was acting; 
He was in His existence a duplication of the 
modes of Being; He was divine; He was born of 
the Spirit, while we, as yet, are little more than 
born of the flesh. Though we are now beginning 
to be born of the Spirit, we have still a long way to 
go. Jesus stands for the race-man on the divine 
side, He having recognized God as His Father. 
Adam stood for the race-man on the human 
side, acknowledging his origin according to his 
lights from an objective standpoint, as being 
made of the dust of the ground. Jesus saw the 
world of objects, and knew that it originated in 
the subjective world, where Truth is, in which 
He recognized His Being. Our consciousness 

177 



of what we see is only the objective side of that 
which is subjective in the unexplored realm of 
our consciousness. Jesus demonstrated His 
dominion, and moreover clearly indicated not 
only that we might, but how we should, demon- 
strate ours here and now, as He did. He told 
us that we were of the same Father as Himself, 
and that we had only to follow the light which 
He gave, to become conscious of our divine 
inheritance. He said, "The things that I do ye 
shall do also." We can, however, only do them 
by following His teaching, not by contemplating 
His personality, but by conducting ourselves in 
such a manner as to do away with the conditions 
around us — healing the sick, casting out tempers, 
and keeping our own temper in a state of Love. 
Is it not high time that we were manifesting his 
teaching, instead of only looking at Je^us — 
high time that we believed in Him, in the sense 
of carrying out what He taught, which was to 
have done with worshipping His personality and 
with dependence upon Him and His powers; 
and taking the Truth that He taught, to con- 
crete it in consciousness and conduct? 

Our word is the prime factor in the making of 
consciousness. This being so, and our word, 
or the beliefs of the past, having brought us into 

i 7 8 



•our present conditions, what joy to know that 
the words of Truth, followed as steadfastly as 
we have followed words of ignorance, will bring 
us into the condition of the glorious liberty of 
the children of Life ! 

And yet we sit around looking at objects ! 
This is not Life! Objects are too paltry to en- 
gross us. Shall we not here, in the midst of all 
temptation to go the way of the race, believe in 
God the Father Almighty? We are of those 
who have heard the sayings, snail we not do 
them ? The time has come for us no more to 
talk, I say, but do. I will never cease my efforts 
to dive deeper into this life of Truth, till all 
those conditions of bondage, rising up from the 
race-self to enthral me, have been reckoned 
with and overcome — so help me Most High ! 



IX. 



WE have recognized by our experiences that 
everything which we create or bring forth 
consciously must first take shape in mind, 
before it can appear in external form as an 
object. It would be natural for us to think 
that we ourselves were formed in the same way, 
that is, that we were first mental beings, before 

179 



we came into the elements; or else, how should 
we ourselves form objects after the fashion in 
which we do? 

In the working of Principle there is only one 
method; therefore in the operation of the Prin- 
ciple of Knowledge, which is the Principle of 
Omniscience, everything must be done after that 
method. 

We have seen that we ourselves are formed 
by the Principle of Intelligence, that we are 
planned upon, and worked out by means of, the 
Principle of Knowledge. Now it is by Principle 
that we conceive an image in the mind which we 
afterwards put into form. Since this, then, is 
the one way in which Principle creates, we too 
must have been thus created. 

When we go back to the earliest records, we 
find the story runs that God said, "Let us 
make man in our image," and subsequently that 
He pronounced His creation to be "very good." 

Now for God to make man in His own image 
it is necessary that He should first conceive what 
He Himself IS. 

Before a thing is made, it must lie potential in 
the mental realm of the maker, then follows the 
manifestation; but it is at its first conception in 
thought that it is truly made. So man was 

1 80 



made in the image and likeness of God, by God 
conceiving what He Himself IS. 

The concept God had, must have come out of 
Himself, out of His own Substance, just as the 
image which we have of anything, comes out of 
our Substance; and if God made man after His 
own image and likeness, and God, in His pure 
Substance, is Wisdom, Knowledge, Health — 
then man, being made out of the Substance of 
God, is essentially Wisdom, Knowledge, Health. 

Now in Genesis II. we read, "And the Lord 
God formed man of the dust of the ground.'*" 
The words "Lord God" stand for a different 
idea to the word "God," in Genesis I. The 
idea of "Lord" is one who has dominion, who. 
leads ; and that which leads is desire. With the 
first dawn of consciousness — long before self- 
consciousness, which follows manifestation — 
was the instinctive desire to be expressed. In 
the God-consciousness is the perfect image of 
Himself. This He sends forth to become con- 
scious of itself. Before man knows that he is, he 
is formed in the embryo, and with the first breath 
that he draws, he becomes dimly conscious of 
himself; until then, God alone is conscious, 
of him. Genesis II. represents man's first con- 
sciousness of himself. Genesis I. represents 

181 



God's consciousness of man before that. There- 
fore, to God, from the standpoint of Principle, 
man is formed in the image and likeness of the 
Eternal; in man's mind, from the standpoint of 
the senses, he is formed out of the dust of the 
ground, from which comes, and to which returns, 
the food he eats. Objective man is formed out of 
the dust of the ground. 

It then runs, "The Lord God. .. .breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life." This first 
breath of life is the desire, which is inherent in 
him, concreting itself, taking form in body and 
mental organism, after his perfect conception. 
It is the instinctive desire to manifest, that calls 
forth the action of Principle to that end. The 
child is perfect, and has life before it is born, 
but only with its first breath does it take on 
conscious life. 

Watching phenomena, we see that every thing 
comes into objective life in this way. First 
desire, then manifestation. Just as the mother 
takes food from the ground and transmutes it 
into the body of the child, so the mental organ- 
ization of man, subjectively at one with its 
Substance, instinctively formed the body, first 
out of the food of the mother taken from the 
earth, and later out of the food the man takes 

182 



himself. But man, the metaphysical being, was 
perfect before he was cast in the elements, being 
made in the image and likeness of God; and 
from this he can never fall, except he bring God 
with him. What has seemed to be a fall, is 
that he has not yet risen to the knowledge of 
his own inherent perfection. He perceives the 
Principle of Perfection, but sees that he is not 
always bringing perfection out of it ; he has not 
yet learnt to use his mental organization from 
subjective premises, from the standpoint of his 
origin in GOD. When he comes into con- 
sciousness of himself, he takes charge of the 
mechanism of his own body and mind, and 
manages it very badly, for he is as yet without 
consciousness of his true Being; but when he 
shall come into touch with his true Being, he will 
have no further trouble. 

We are now at that stage in evolution where 
we can begin to take a hand in regenerating 
our own consciousness, in accordance with the 
Principle of Life, which is Eternal. 

Let us take man as we find him. Perfect in 
his organization, perfect in idea, but not perfect 
to himself, for he neither knows God nor him* 
self, he knows only experiences ; and though he 
has some fitful flashes of Truth, they are not 

183 



enough to enable him to work successfully. 
There is a Principle behind the mind, behind 
reason, judgment, and will. 

The objective faculties, working according to 
their nature, when harnessed to Principle, give 
absolutely right results, as we see in science 
and art; so, too, if our ideas are born out of 
Principle, we get right results in emotion and 
sensation. 

Man in the human state we might compare 
to a chrysalis; the chrysalis corresponds to the 
human nature, while the ultimate, the divine 
nature, may be likened to the ultimate of the 
chrysalis — the butterfly. He is perfect now 
within his chrysalis, he is divine now, and when 
he shall become conscious of his divinity, and 
shall lose consciousness of his chrysalis-nature, 
he will have simply come to that which was 
within him as chrysalis, concealed to sense-cog- 
nition. The chrysalis is more truly butterfly 
than chrysalis, but during the time of its in- 
completeness the butterfly appears as worm. 
The senses see it as chrysalis, but mental per- 
ception sees it as butterfly. One who could 
see mentally would say, "behold the butterfly!" 
He would look right through the shell, chry- 
salis, and see the butterfly. 

184 



It is a great step to perceive the inherent 
divine nature, and the necessity to act upon that 
as a premise in our living. 

Comparing ourselves as man to God, not as 
man to man, we see to what it is our destiny to 
attain. We have not yet reached to the divine 
idea of man, either in experience, or in physical 
organization, or in anything else. But within 
is this idea, and when we ourselves begin to 
work at fashioning character after the image 
and likeness of God, after the manner of Omni- 
science, of Omnipotence, of the Infinite, then 
shall we begin to clothe ourselves upon with a 
body that represents true man, since the nature 
of the body of consciousness must be duplicated 
In that of the elements. 

Now we have been brought into the world, 
into this kindergarten of the senses, as a first 
stage in the making of character and con- 
sciousness. 

We are nothing apart from God. God is ever 
with us ; therefore, everything necessary for our 
advancement and ultimate perfection in con- 
sciousness is with us at the present time. 

Only the ignorant need laws to govern them. 
I mean ignorant, not in the superficial sense of 
unlettered or unintellectual; not necessarily 

185 



ignorant in mind, but ignorant in heart, those 
who, knowing in mind, do not adopt the true 
way of working, because they do not feel what 
they think. 

The very cleverest men, in the world's esti- 
mation, are often as ignorant, in the true sense, 
as the unlettered, because the working-power is 
not attached to the understanding. It is always 
said that if you win the feeling of a jury, you 
will gain its verdict. When a man's under- 
standing is not backed up by his feeling, his 
verdict is liable to go with his feeling. 

We know that when we are learning to 
bicycle, it is necessary to keep the attention 
fixed upon where we wish to go, for if we con- 
centrate upon an obstacle, the subjective mind 
takes us straight into it; some of us have ex- 
perienced this to our undoing. 

The understanding may be good, we may 
wish to do the right thing; but if the feeling- 
nature, drawing the other way, is not inhibited, 
and reason and judgment put into the manage- 
ment of affairs until the feeling-nature is trained 
to feel that which we perceive to be the Truth, 
we may run into all manner of evil. 

Man has in him, latent in his Being, all that 
is necessary to his coming into divine con- 

1 86 



sciousness of character, of environment, of 
everything. 

As we said, it is only the ignorant who need 
laws to govern them ; therefore, mankind is not 
lacking in law; the law of Rightness has estab- 
lished a common law for relative use in the 
world of sense, but that law is not the Principle, 
it is only the perception of what it is expedient 
to do under certain circumstances. 

Now there is a law by which we can progress, 
if we use it intelligently; the law of affirmation 
and denial. What is to be denied? Jesus 
said, "If any man would come after me, let 
him deny himself, and take up his cross daily 
and follow me." "Let him deny himself." 
What shall he deny himself? Some pleasure? 
This is how we have understood it. There are 
those who think that they are denying them- 
selves by refraining from special foods on one 
day in the week ; there are others who think that 
they deny themselves by going to church ; per- 
haps they want to be at a tea-party or at a 
horse-race; nevertheless, they go to church 
looking the other way, with tears in their eyes 
over it. They have done it so faithfully ! But 
what Jesus said was, "let a man deny himself." 
That which man has thought to be himself is 

187 



not his true self. It is but his personality, the 
sum of his experiences. This is the self that 
has to be denied. We have to get control of 
ourselves; how are we to do it? The answer- 
is, that we are to deny ourselves. We are to 
deny that which we have heretofore considered 
to be ourselves, that is, we are to deny that our 
personality, the sum of our experiences, con- 
stitutes the self. We are also to deny belief in 
all sorts of outside influences having power over 
us; that objects, circumstances, and people can 
make us either happy or miserable. Here, for 
instance, is some one whom we like, and we are 
happy; here is one whom we do not like, and 
we are miserable. It is a see-sawing all the 
time. W r e have to deny that all this has any 
power over us ; all our experiences in the world 
on that basis have been false, built up from 
the premise that our origin was Adam, and that 
from him we inherited original sin. 

Now we must turn round and act from the 
other standpoint. 

Why not say that we have inherited Original 
Holiness, and thus deny the influence that before 
led us astray? All this fabric of consciousness, 
that has been built up by the race and by our- 
selves, and is recorded in the soul, has to be 

1 88 



denied, together with all temptation to live the 
old life as we have lived it hitherto. 

Let the mind affirm and hold fast to an idea 
which it perceives to be right — right, not as 
between man and man, but as to Principle — 
with every intention of enlisting the feeling on 
the side of that idea; and let it declare to the 
feeling-nature, "You have no power over me to 
allure me into these thoughts which are pressing 
on me; I am spirit and not matter, good and 
not evil, for God made me, and what God made 
is good; even though the race has been allured 
by you, or I have been allured by you in the 
past, I will not bow down to you nor serve you, 
thoughts of my heart; I will have no more to 
do with you !" Such a denial tends to destroy 
the power that the mind has heretofore looked 
upon as inherent in the habits of the past. 

As this lecture is upon the healing of disease, 
I will remark that this law may be applied to 
that end without reference to character at all, 
but that the real gist of this teaching is that 
man shall deal with character, and cleanse it of 
all that ultimates in disease. 

We have all sorts of superstitions, and we 
have seen that according to our belief, so it is to 
us ; whether the facts believed in are true or not 

189 



makes no difference; it is to us as we think. 

Although all Knowledge and all Power is 
latent to our organization, to be called into con- 
sciousness for our use, yet we have been taught 
by experience, living teachers, and books, that 
we are enslaved by the elements. 

Though we originally took the elements and 
made body out of them, yet they, the every ele- 
ments we are using every day in our bodies, are 
supposed to have power over us. It is, as we 
know, a very common belief that a little varia- 
tion in the temperature of the air will not only 
make us feel cold, but will give us what we call 
a cold. 

Do we not see how in the case of one believing 
this, the subjective mind is bound to work out 
a cold? There is no way out of it so long as 
we are hypnotized by such beliefs. Our real 
hope, after denying these mistaken beliefs, is in 
knowledge of the Truth. 

We know that Life is First, that the Sub- 
jective is the Cause of the objective — because 
Life Itself, speaking of Life in its primary sense, 
is Omnipotent — and we also know that the con- 
scious mind has access to Omnipotence, by vir- 
tue of its direct connection through the subjec- 
tive mind. 



190 



Here are we, in touch with All Power, All 
Knowledge, shying at a draught of air! It is 
absurd ! But, you say, this has been our ex- 
perience. Why, what else could you have ex- 
perienced? You believed it. 

Now there are two kinds of belief; we may 
believe in our heads and we may believe in our 
hearts, which is to feel; or we may combine the 
two. If we believe that the air will give us a 
cold, and circumstances come about that subject 
us to a draught, we can see how the sympathetic 
system will work out that feeling for us. That 
is its function. Though the belief lying in the 
under-consciousness might not be functioned, 
were we at the time in an optimistic state of 
feeling, it certainly would be, were we in a state 
of depression. 

If we put a man under hypnotism, and tell 
him he has taken a terrible cold and looks very 
ill, he will begin to sneeze, will show all the 
disgusting symptoms of a cold, and will become 
very ill. His subjective intelligence has accepted 
that statement, and deductively, through the 
sympathetic system, it has been worked out. 
Why? Because the reason and judgment are 
inhibited, leaving the feeling-nature all unpro- 
tected, subject to suggestion. If we suggest to 

191 



our subject that we are putting a needle through 
his cheek, he will scream with pain, but we have 
done nothing. Again, we put a needle through 
his cheek, telling him that it will not hurt, and 
he does not feel it. Thus we see that it is to us 
as we believe. 

But, you say, I did not believe the air would 
give me cold; I did not know the window was 
open, I never thought about it. Where then, 
do you think, is all the great race-experience, 
brought down from the ages? Your whole sub- 
conscious feeling-nature is impregnated with 
it, and it is now a part of your own individual 
experience. 

Remember, the faculties of the subjective 
mind interpret and record all mental experiences 
in terms of feeling. So long as we believe in 
the air giving cold, it is like our praying to it to 
do so; or it is like a standing order to it, to work 
out a cold whenever external conditions suggest. 
We may not think it in our conscious minds ; 
we may be asleep in bed, and know nothing 
about it ; but that is a state in which we function 
elementary experiences of the past, until true 
experiences have established one where the 
standing orders are in consonance with our real 
dominion. People say, "I did not think I 

192 



should take cold," regarding the "I" as if 
perched in the brain. While, however, we were 
asleep and could not defend ourselves with a 
sound word, the soul went to work as usual, and 
functioned race-beliefs. 

We must remember that the soul of man is 
the feeling of man, and feeling is made up of 
the consensus of the race-experience. Feeling 
is the power or weakness of the man. You. 
may lose the four other senses, and still live, but. 
if you lose feeling, all is gone. What we usually 
call feeling is only a department of feeling; the 
mind is so enmeshed in the enthralling ex- 
periences of the upper consciousness, that we 
do not realize that feeling exists apart from it. 
Feeling is the secondary motive power of the 
work done in the body. It is also the primary — 
Principle being Original Feeling. 

When we realize that it is to us according to 
our belief, and that belief need not exist in the 
brain or self-consciousness alone, but is a much 
more active factor in the heart, or sub-con- 
sciousness, then we have made the first step ; but 
it takes a much greater effort to deny the beliefs 
of the heart, than of the brain. 

For instance, I have had people come saying 
that they do not believe in the healing, who yet: 

193 



are healed in a single treatment ; and others say- 
ing, "I know you can help me, you have cured 
such an one" ; yet with these I often have a 
difficult time, and sometimes fail altogether, their 
hearts being full of disbelief. Sometimes there 
is harmony between the sub-conscious and the 
conscious receptivity or belief; then healing is 
quick ; but even should there be no natural re- 
ceptivity, if one has the faithfulness to come 
over and over again with persistent desire, the 
consciousness will become enlightened, and char- 
acter as well as body be cleansed. In the under- 
consciousness there is sometimes not enough be- 
lief in, nor sympathy with, this higher healing, 
to effect a cure; there is next to nothing to call 
out ; it has to grow. 

I am often asked why I do not give cases of 
healing in my lectures now-a-days, and my in- 
variable answer is that I forget to do so, for the 
reason that it is the smallest part of the benefit 
that people receive, and cases which are really 
wonderful pass from my mind the moment they 
are done. I scarcely ever mention them, even 
in private. I think it better to relate these cases 
of demonstration privately to those who specially 
desire information on these concrete lines ; and 
I should be glad to introduce any who prefer the 



194 



living witness, to a number of those who have 
experienced wonderful healing, some of func- 
tional, others of organic disease. 

You have all perceived that I am teaching a 
science; that I am unmistakably formulating a 
principle, not merely a principle, but the Science 
Principle of man, and of the universe. You may 
be sure that there are plenty of cases evidencing 
its action, for was there ever a principle dis- 
covered that would not work ? How much more, 
then, this, the Fundamental Substance, embrac- 
ing all the modes that we have denominated 
principles — whether found active in man's or- 
ganism, or in that of the universe, or whether 
put into active use by man himself! 

The time to use denial and affirmation most 
effectually is at the moment of temptation, 
whether the temptation be to take cold or to get 
angry. Oftentimes the one involves the other. 
If the temptation is to anger, say silently, "No, 
I am not an animal, and will not settle my 
difficulties in this way; I will not bow down to 
and serve this savage instinct; my protection and 
power is the Knowledge of the Infinite Good, 
and on this I will stand." 

Or, at the moment that you begin to sneeze 
and cough, rouse yourself and become very 

195 



positive. All this is just on the mind-cure plane. 
It is bringing the law to bear on your con- 
sciousness. It is only the first stage, but we; 
cannot escape the law, and must be faithful to 
the alphabet of healing as to the alphabet of 
learning. Sometimes a few successes in prevent- 
ing or healing such a thing as a cold, make one 
immune for years. I used to be glad of oppor- 
tunities of putting my foot down on these things. 
I used to make them, when they did not come 
fast enough ; I wanted to prove what the law of 
affirmation and denial would do. There was a 
time when I was so liable to take cold, that I 
did so if I went out on to my doorstep in my 
slippers on a June evening. When I knew of 
this teaching, I took pains to stop all that non- 
sense, and did so. 

On one occasion, when I was righting this- 
battle with myself, I happened to get my feet 
very wet on a March day in Chicago in my un- 
finished house. I sat down on the spot in the 
cold, and talked to my feet for three hours. I 
told them what I expected of them, and it was a 
perfectly successful plan; I did not take cold. 
Yon can talk to your feet or to any other 
part of yourself as earnestly as to some one 
else, and if it is done with vigor in the 

196 



early days of one's career, much may be 
accomplished. 

Swing your arms, or stamp; clench your 
fists, jump; do anything to arouse a feeling of 
acute conviction, and to cause contrary vibra- 
tions in the consciousness. By awakening the 
organization to proper action, you will have 
been saved for the time. There are higher ways, 
but just now we are dealing with the law of 
affirmation and denial, which is especially 
adapted to beginners, or to those who are not at 
the moment able to rise to the more spiritual 
practice. 

After the denial is the time to make the affir- 
mation. What are we? Essentially, we are 
the children of God; thus we are spiritual, not 
material ; in substance we are Wisdom, Good- 
ness, Love, and all that God is. God is our 
resource, from whom we can draw at every 
turn; God is our Health, God is our Life, God 
is our Peace ; therefore, we need have no more of 
these contradictions. We have the Principle of 
the whole universe with us, and we will stand on 
that, rather than on weakness and failure ; stand 
up strong on it, rather than on human hypotheses 
or experiences. We must rise to a state of di- 
vine virility, of conviction of this Truth. 

197 



The condition of sickness is just as much the 
result of mental action in the under-conscious- 
ness, as any obtaining constructive condition, 
•only it is based on experience which bears no 
likeness to Principle, which is not loyal to 
God, but is loyal only to failure, having there- 
fore no spiritual correspondence, nor any exist- 
ence, except as human experience. When we 
have to deal with it, let us call on the great 
Principle by which we were brought forth, and 
are maintained; thus we may demand that this 
thing depart from us, and it will do so. 

Remember, denial is most useful in the acute 
stage when things first come to us; it helps us 
to ally ourselves with the normal ; if we are sen- 
sitive, however, continued denial may be disturb- 
ing in its nature; we must discriminate; it is 
possible in some states to deny in a way that 
will make the evil more real to us ; therefore, 
when the true ego is once roused, we should not 
continue to deny. Then is the time for a great, 
splendid, strenuous, affirmation; we shall thus 
convince ourselves of Rightness, and that which 
seems wrong will pass away. 

Disease, no matter by what name we call it, 
is always a disease of consciousness before it 
appears in the physical realm. 

198 



There are normal ideas, which, working with 
the great Subjective idea of the universe, result 
in a condition of health; and there are abnormal 
ideas, which, being functioned equally by Prin- 
ciple, produce disorder and disease ; for we can- 
not work without Principle even when we work 
from wrong premises. 



X. 



OUR subject to-day is the healing of the 
hereditary soul-consciousness, as well as 
that which has been evolved out of personal 
experiences. 

If we reflect that this planet was once fire, 
intense heat, and that in the fire lay the poten- 
tiality for the earth to appear, we shall see that 
all the elements that are known to-day must 
have been latent in that fire. Now, besides 
that which is cognizable by the senses, there 
is in the universe a Substance which cannot be 
described in terms of space or sense at all; there 
is this Principle of Omniscience, of which we 
have constantly spoken, out of which directly 
mental things are born. This Principle was just 
as much with the fire then as it is with us now. 
So that the two states of consciousness — that 



199 



state which we call sense and matter, and that 
which we call mind and emotion — were both 
latent in the beginning. There never was any 
fire without Spirit, never any heat without Spirit, 
never the least objective sign, without there 
being at the back of it All-Consciousness, Orig- 
inal Consciousness, which we have been calling 
the Principle of Omniscience. 

Everything has come down to us through the 
fire. Man is plucked right out of the cauldron 
of fire. This great Intelligence-Substance con- 
taining the fire, containing the earth, brought 
forth, when the right time came, the great ani- 
mals : and as everything else came out of the 
ground, man also came out of the ground. 
Until the atmosphere was made ready, plants 
and animals did not appear, and until the atmos- 
phere, mental and physical, was perfectly pre- 
pared for the purpose, man did not appear. He, 
as a sensuous being, came out of the ground 
clothed upon with the elements of the earth, of 
which his body is made. We may imagine that 
his original coming was just like that of any of 
the lower orders of life, and that, growing cen- 
tury after century, he finally arrived at the stage 
when he became self-conscious man, and man 
became woman also: for from the existence of 



200 



certain rudimentary organs found in the body, 
it seems evident that man was originally double- 
sexed and self-perpetuating, but that as he 
evolved, the higher form of generation and 
objectification occurred, and what had appeared 
at first as one became two. 

Principle, as we know, is Subjective; the 
mind is subjective and in connection with It. 
There is no sense-mind ; every transaction ap- 
pearing in sense is really mentally conducted. 
The presence of man in the electric fire, in the 
molten stuff, in the cooling elements, his coming 
up ultimately out of the ground, and his ensuing 
objective life — all this, let us remember, is but 
a pantomime-presentation of the mental genera- 
tion of man in the Substance of his Creator. 
In reality, during all this progress, he is cloth- 
ing himself with the pure Substance of the 
Almighty, and what appears to be but dust of 
the ground belongs to the expression-realm of 
Principle. During all the mistakes that man 
appears to make, the spiritual birth only de- 
lays its coming; in themselves they count for 
nothing. 

While this great planet was forming, man 
was waiting to be expressed, and when he was 
finally brought forth, he comprised the con- 

20 1 



sciousness of the planet in his own conscious- 
ness ; so that he has to-day, even at this remote 
time, nothing less than the consciousness of the 
earth dating back to the fire. His under-con- 
sciousness is composed of the earth consciousness 
— of the experience of the earth back to the fire 
— and what he sees through his senses, is that 
which exists in his own under-consciousness. 
Thus everything that we now see around us, as 
we look out, is a picture of our own knowing and 
feeling-nature in terms of object. Just so, on the 
Principle or Intelligence side of things, we are 
learning to picture the Original Consciousness 
by which all objective phenomena have come. 

As we have within us the earth-consciousness,, 
in the sense of what we call inanimate life, so- 
every animal comes of the same mass of con- 
sciousness as that from which we have been 
drawn forth, but we are given a mental organ- 
ization by which we may look back on our 
Original Source, the one Substance, of which 
we have spoken so often; and looking back on 
the history of the nations and of the planet, and 
reasoning about it, we may find our way out of 
the dominion of the elements, because we are 
destined to be above them consciously, as we 
were subjectively in the fire. 

202 



So, since the animals are all sense-objects and 
have been pulled out of the same stuff as we 
were, we, being the highest product, have them 
all in our under-consciousness now. When man 
can look at these same sense-objects purely with 
the mind, free from the sophistries of sense, I do 
not know whether he will see flowers and ani- 
mals, or not; I do not know what he will see,, 
but certain it is, that he will see them as they 
are in their reality, as Words of God. When 
our minds are functioning directly from the 
mental Substance, we are bringing forth out of 
It, into concrete form, self-conscious Man, as, 
conceived of in the first chapter of Genesis. 

We have had a vast deal of experience in 
coming up from the ground and in clothing 
ourselves therewith, since first we were drawn 
up out of it. We have been able to supply our- 
selves ever since by taking anew from the 
ground; by eating vegetables and animals to 
make good the bodily waste. These experiences 
are not the man, but they are the man's experi- 
ence. There is another side of our nature which 
must also be catered for — a mental, a knowl- 
edge-organization, waiting to be supplied with 
Original Knowledge. Herein is man superior 
to all other forms of creation. 



203 



In our treatment of the idea of heredity, we 
have to take down this faulty fabric of con- 
sciousness, and build up one that is made, not 
merely of elemental and sensuous experience, 
but of experience of Truth, of Principle. We 
have hitherto been working on the hypothesis 
that we were born out of the race, an endless 
chain of race ; and although we have talked 
very glibly about being children of God, we 
have behaved as though we were children of the 
race. Now this whole hypothesis is wrong. 

We have heard it said of old that the sins 
of the fathers shall be visited on the children. 
Whether we have taken this as authoritative or 
no, we have behaved as if it were a true state- 
ment of man's heredity. Many have believed 
that we, as human beings, have originated in 
one another, and all have behaved as if this 
were the case ; and when we look about us, 
from the appearance of things, this would 
seem to be true. But Jesus said, "Judge not 
according to appearance, but judge righteous 
judgment," because, in human judgment, the 
factor of the senses, which are delusive in their 
nature, has to be reckoned with. 

A child sometimes develops rheumatism so 
early in life, that it is evidently of an hereditary 

204 



type, for he had not time to manufacture it for 
himself. This rheumatism, like all disease, could 
only have come out of a false consciousness, one 
that had no ground in Truth, no significance 
beyond the objective, no spiritual Cause as its 
Parent stuff. We have been wonderfully faith- 
ful through the ages in carrying out the race- 
mistakes. Now suppose we call a halt and take 
a new premise, and realize that we are not bound 
to accept all our legacies, and that we may refuse 
to accept this heredity of "sin." We are not 
obliged to accept an earthly inheritance, if we do 
not want it; we are at liberty to shake it off and 
leave it; neither need we accept our heritage of 
the race-nonsense. But it takes time to shake 
that off. Suppose we say, "I have been making 
a mistake all my life; now I wake up to the 
Truth that God is my Father, that I am a child 
of Knowledge, of Goodness, of Holiness, of Life 
Itself, and that I have inherited from this won- 
derful Father of mine all that He is ; I did not 
know this before, I believed what is said in the 
Decalogue because it seemed so true, but now I 
see that this was a statement according to 
appearance, and that my true heredity could 
not be better. I will rise up with an open 
countenance, with joy in my face, and I will 

205 



begin a new life from this standpoint." 

We think ordinarily, in our old state of mind, 
"I do this thing" — the personal "I" — whereas 
this "I" has no power of itself; but suppose 
that this "I" could for a moment become per- 
fectly still, perfectly relaxed and receptive, know- 
ing that it had no power of its own, and that it 
need not exert itself at all, but had only to let: 
go and allow the great Power to surge through 
it and do the work, how the chains of the past 
would drop away ! 

God is the Original Principle of Health, out 
of which the conditional health has come; there- 
fore, we inherit Original Health, but until we 
know of our inheritance, we cannot act upon it, 
it will remain a blank to us. 

The heredity of feeling, both sensation and 
emotion, has been passed on to us; we have 
had our fill. I have known people attribute 
their faults of character to their heredity. I 
once knew a clever, good-hearted lawyer who 
perpetually got up at prayer-meetings and con- 
fessed to having a temper; once he knocked a 
man downstairs ; he was very sorry about it, 
but he "could not help it." Because his father 
had a temper just like his, the man considered 
he was helpless; he inherited it, and the world 

206 



ought to forgive him for his foolishness. He 
really bemoaned himself before the people be- 
cause he had done this thing; but he was help- 
less, he had it from his father! Now anger is 
just as much a disease as is cholera, only it is 
potential disease, not yet having its concrete 
form. It is stored up for the present; it will 
take some form at last; in the meantime it will 
at least appear in the expression of the face. 

Could we but get the clear idea of our origin 
in God, and that this inheritance which has 
been foisted upon us by mere race-experience, is 
only a bogus one, having no grounds in Truth 
at all, can we not see how quickly these diseases, 
which we call hereditary, would pass — how eyes 
that had become dim would shine with the light 
of God in them? Life is really worth living 
when we feel we can touch Infinite Life in prac- 
tice; and a part of the practice is to learn to 
deny ourselves, not some cherished thing, harm- 
less though it be, but some habit of thought 
that seems a part of ourselves, some emotion 
that is not of the Father, and that cannot show 
any ground for being at all. Let the personal 
man deny himself thoughts of anger and criti- 
cism, and lay hold of the great Cause of all that 
IS ! If we are to enter into Life, the mind must 



207 



not be caught by objects, which we. may enjoy. as 
much without being caught. We should enjoy 
as masters, not as slaves. For what avail these 
objects which give us so much satisfaction for 
the moment? While we are straining after 
them we die. 

All errors of the past must go, but only to 
give place to something else; for if everything 
in the soul which was not born of Truth were 
to be swept away this instant, we should not 
have enough consciousness left to keep us alive. 

Very early in His life Jesus began to separate 
Himself from His mother. Mothers do not 
like this very much, but they have not criticised 
the boy Jesus for doing so. On the occasion of 
His tarrying in the temple to hear the doctors 
and ask them questions, He allowed His mother 
to go a two days' journey and never told her, 
but left her to find it out for herself. Poor 
mother! Two days' search; four days' journey; 
the mother's anxiety! It would have been so 
easy for Jesus to say, "I am going to stay and 
talk with the doctors"; but no, He was wise 
enough to know that Wisdom was sufficient to 
take care of her, and that both Mary and He 
must live the doctrine afterwards enunciated by 
Him, that a man must leave his father and his 

208 



mother. He had a higher destiny than to re- 
main tied to her. "How is it that ye sought 
me? wist ye not that I must be about my 
Father's business?" What He did then prob- 
ably saved His mother many a pang in after 
years. We see how completely He disallowed 
the old idea of attachment. Of course, we must 
teach children when they do not know enough 
to teach themselves; occasionally, however, we 
find one wiser than we are, and then we ought 
to let him live by that Wisdom, without in- 
truding our own ideas upon him. We must trust 
the Life of the child, which is the same as our 
Life, and is worthy of trust, thus saving our- 
selves much needless anxiety. I am speaking like 
this to show you that it is necessary to begin life 
from a new standpoint, and not to make so 
much of our ties of consanguinity and affinity, 
until we get our bearings on the other side, 
until we are able to keep our divine conscious- 
ness intact, and begin to realize our new birth. 

This incident appears to be an early demon- 
stration of what Jesus enunciated in His later 
teaching; which is as it should be, first the 
living, then the teaching. "He that loveth 
father or mother more than me, is not worthy 
of me." That is, whoso diverts his powers to 



209 



personality is not worthy of me : and in another 
place, "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh 
not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." 
That is what He did, He forsook them all. 
Again, "There is no man that hath left house, 
or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or 
wife, or children, or lands, for my sake and the 
gospel's, but he shall receive an hundred-fold 
now in this time, houses, and brethren, and 
sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, 
with persecutions; and in the world to come 
eternal life." So it means that whosoever de- 
taches himself from these things now, shall not 
be the poorer, but shall be richer than ever. 
There are those who think that, if we are good, 
we cannot expect to get rich in this life, that we 
must lie and cheat to do that. This was not 
the doctrine of Jesus, who said that we should 
get an hundred-fold more, and mentioned the 
very things that should be repaid. Can we not 
realize that living in accordance with this teach- 
ing is bringing about the "world to come" — 
Eternal Life? 

The more a man knows of Truth, the more he 
is in touch with the chemistry of the universe, 
and can get what he will. That is why we are 
not allowed to lay hold of the tree of life in our 

210 



ignorant state, lest we simply perpetuate this 
groaning, sickly, miserable existence, which is 
not worth perpetuating. 

Jesus was teaching the metaphysics of living; 
we must not think that we need take this teach- 
ing literally, and that to carry out His precepts 
we must necessarily leave father and mother 
spatially; that is not what He meant, for, 
wherever we go, we take our consciousness 
with us. It may or may not be necessary or 
wise for us to go away for a time, in order to get 
our bearings, and escape from the hold that our 
.surroundings have on our feeling-nature ; but 
what He really meant was, that we must train 
•our minds to stand alone with God. This 
means that right in the midst of those related 
to us by the closest ties, we must keep our 
minds fixed on the Truth within, and deal with 
our environment with the mind thus stayed. 

In line with this, we have the parable about a 
supper to which certain guests were bidden, who 
one and all made excuses. The supper repre- 
sents the call to know God; the guests, those 
who doubtless had the intellectual perception of 
a great Truth, but were too busy with affairs, 
one with his land, another with his cattle, to 
come. A third, appealing on higher grounds, 



211 



said, "I have married a wife, and therefore I 
cannot come" ; surely I may be excused, and so 
the great opportunity passed him by also. On 
another occasion, when the call came to one, he 
appealed on the negative side, and said, "Suffer 
me first to go and bury my father." But the 
answer was, "Let the dead bury their dead." 
How absolutely inhuman not to bury the dead ! 
but those who are burying the dead, if they do not 
learn Truth before they die, are as dead as those 
they bury ; the day of their death is written in their 
very organization ; it has not come to pass, but 
their consciousness is devoured already. Let 
those people who have not the word of Truth 
attend to such obsequies, but let those who have 
the call, come. 

Jesus said, "Call no man your father upon the 
earth, for one is your father which is in heaven," 
you have your Principle first of all, before any 
human ancestor. Again He said, "Whosoever 
he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, 
he cannot be my disciple." We have to leave 
all these things till we can come back to them 
with wisdom and control. In the same way, in 
order that the mind may keep its tryst with the 
Most High, it is often necessary to get away for 
the moment from the bondage and enthralment 

212 



of those who are sick and sorrowful, or even 
those who draw on our emotions in a loving- 
way. Then, having confirmed ourselves in the 
practice of consciously living in the Great Spirit, 
we can come back to the world with a shining 
face, and be constructively helpful to those whom 
we may have had to leave for a while, when the 
stress was too great, the trial too hard. "If 
the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the 
ditch." Just as in healing ourselves, we have to 
deny the personal self and its experiences, as 
being the seat of Power, so in others we are to 
realize all Power as being with God, thus bring- 
ing the positive feeling to supplant the negative 
condition. 

There are people who are perpetually function- 
ing the sorrows of others ; they have no sorrows 
of their own, and all would be well with them if 
others did not constantly show pictures of misery 
to them. It may be that a great friend is in 
trouble, and we ourselves, through long habit of 
sympathizing, have already come to our limit 
in sympathy with suffering. If we exceed this 
limit, we shall be in worse condition than our 
friend. It is better to hold constructive thoughts,, 
recognizing that God appears, from the stand- 
point of sense, to let people suffer, as part of 



213 



their evolution. Why then should we not leave 
the suffering, which is part of the breaking down 
of the material nature, and put all our feeling 
into realizing the Good, the Truth as It is in 
Being, for our friend, thus bringing our sym- 
pathies into line with the spiritual birth, which 
only takes place during the disillusionment of 
the material consciousness? 

Sympathy with sorrow and suffering is good, 
and makes life tolerable, while we are in an 
ignorant state, and unable to apply ourselves to 
the bringing forth of the divine consciousness, 
but when we learn that weak sympathy, even 
though it assuage for the moment, tends to per- 
petuate in the temperament the habit of suffering 
— since sympathy acts like morphia, for a grain 
of which one pays an ounce of character — then 
we shall see that it is better to have the courage 
to turn the mind away from the suffering, to rise 
to a higher plane, and thus to heal, rather than 
to palliate. Sometimes the only way not to 
tumble into the same mire, is to steel our hearts. 
People must suffer for their ignorance ; it is a 
warning of erroneous beliefs. If we can do 
anything to help them, let us do it, but we must 
not go down into the slums of sorrow and 
suffering ourselves ; we must remain in our 

2T4 



Kingdom ; this will translate the divine nature, 
the Knowledge-nature, into terms of feeling. 
When true ideas are functioned by the mind, 
true feelings must follow; this enables us to help 
those who are in trouble. Every day of life the 
general happiness is being added to, or taken 
from, in one way or another. 

The very best people, those who most want to 
know God, but think only to find Him by "cross- 
ing the river," are those who often suffer most. 
Why is this? One of the best men I ever knew 
was much troubled with back-ache. Deep sym- 
pathy with misery is enough to make anyone's 
back ache. There is a great centre of the 
sympathetic system — the system of the emotional 
nature — in the small of the back. If we enter- 
tain depressing emotions too readily and too 
long, this centre will give warning, the simplest 
form of which is back-ache. 

Sympathy, without recognition of the Healing 
Principle within the sufferer, will tend to produce 
the same conditions in the sympathizer. The 
consciousness of some of these most excellent 
people is very sensitive ; they believe so firmly 
in sin, and are so troubled over their own sin 
and that of others, that judgment and execution 
seem to have taken place in their consciousness; 



215 



so they lie on a bed of sickness, because of their 
sensitiveness to wrong. It does not occur to 
them that this is the result of ignorance, but 
they believe it to be something visited upon them 
by God. We often hear that sickness has come 
to people because it is the Lord's will. If the 
principle of mathematics could send word that 
two and two are five, then God could send sick- 
ness. It is impossible to get out of a substance 
that which is not in it. It is impossible that God 
could afflict people; it is our ignorance. Ignor- 
ance is not positive, nor of God, it is negative, and 
of ourselves. We must learn to realize that there 
is no Truth in all these negative conditions, and 
then we shall be able to help others. We know 
that conscious emotion, expressed in laughter 
or tears, is catching; subconscious emotion is 
catching also, as catching in the silence as in 
the sound. Mere feeling communicates itself. 
When emotion runs high in a crowd, no word 
need be said; everybody catches it. Feeling is. 
the means by which we communicate with God : 
it is the medium that is given to us for this pur- 
pose. Thoughts awaken feeling; again, feeling 
awakens thoughts. 

The consciousness of clean origin, clean 
descent from the Most High — this it is that 

216 



heals. We know that there are people in whose 
presence we feel restful, uplifted, though per- 
haps not a word is said: their consciousness 
is in a state which appeals to ours. It may be 
only mundane, but it affects us. How much 
more will the consciousness of one whose mind 
is fixed on the Most High, who realizes his 
descent from the Most High, and that he can 
now draw upon his Father for Life, Health, 
Peace and Wisdom — communicate itself to one 
who is in trouble! 



XL 



OUR subject to-day is the soul-Substance. 
By the soul, as has been said, we mean 
the psyche or natural man. All animals have a 
soul-organization for the purpose of self-con- 
sciousness, with this difference, that the animal 
has, so far as we know, no intellectual connection 
with its Maker. One can even speak just as 
properly of the soul of a natural object. The 
natural man is really nothing apart from God, 
though in our use of the word psyche, we imply 
the idea that man came forth by himself as a 
product of man alone. 

We now come to the soul-Substance. This 



217 



latter word, meaning that which stands under, 
unqualified by any material idea, refers to the 
under-lying Creator, the First of all things. The 
Greek term for the Divine Consciousness is 
pneumdj air, breath: the translation of this word 
in our language is spirit — a word meaning, as 
we have seen, exactly the same thing — from the 
Latin spiritus, breath. Now the spirit of man, 
the pneuma, is that which connects him with his 
Creator, and is his potentiality for knowing God. 
In fact, to have developed the spirit of man, as 
the soul is now developed, would mean that the 
man had become acquainted with his Creator, 
and had experienced the Original Creative Con- 
sciousness, just as he has experienced the 
consciousness of the personal world. In other 
words, he who has realized God as Omnipotence, 
as Goodness, has experienced, through the meek 
and lowly channels of his own organism, the 
God-Substance in terms of emotion and sensa- 
tion. He thus not only knows God in mind, 
but in heart; and that consciousness of God 
within him as Spirit, Omniscience, the Great 
First of all things, that consciousness in its de- 
gree, is spiritual. To be born of God into the 
Knowledge of Principle, as vividly as we have 
been born into sensuous knowledge, would be 

218 



to be born of the Spirit. The spirit of man at 
present, is the potentiality of man. To himself, 
he has so far practically existed only in soul-life 
— in the race-experience, in his own experience, 
and in the personality of things. To exist in 
God, in the same way, would be to exist self- 
consciously in the mental realm — that realm 
wherein things lie unborn, and still lie when they 
have been born into the objective state. 

There is one great under-lying Substance, one 
Spirit in the universe, the Spirit of God; that 
one Spirit is the Substance of each of us. The 
Spirit of God, Knowledge, Wisdom, Health, 
Goodness, Eternal Life, belongs just as much 
to each living soul as does the principle of num- 
bers. We know the Almighty as numbers, and 
in all the ways of the principle of proportion that 
belong to the realm of objective life: it is just 
as much our divine birthright, indeed more so, to 
know God as He is related to our inner conscious- 
ness, which would mean the transmuting thereby 
of the personal, carnal consciousness into God- 
consciousness, the same being duplicated in the 
elements — as they are perceived in the pure 
mental realm of Being. The natural body shall 
become a spiritual body. There is one Being 
in the universe. Man has a Being-organization 

219 



within him, which stands under him, supplying 
him with all he needs. We each have access 
to the one Spirit. By making use of the Being 
of God — Principle, and forming the personality 
out of and by It, as it is now formed out of 
and by cognitions in the personal realm, our 
personality will become established in God, in 
the Spirit of God; we shall come to know that 
we are the children of God, and be born into 
the knowledge of Truth. Our true inheritance 
is Original Consciousness. The mind is capable 
of making use of Being within, in such a way 
as to function divine consciousness, just as now it 
functions human consciousness ; we only need 
to change our fundamental premise from object 
to Subject, from race to God. The Spirit of 
man comes into consciousness through the same 
organization — the subjective mind — as does the 
soul of man. In the case of the soul, the mind 
is functioning from the premises of sensuous 
life, as though the things we sense existed of 
themselves apart from God. Spiritual conscious- 
ness is formed by the mind functioning. from the 
subjective stand-point of Principle, bringing 
forth into the personal consciousness — feeling 
and sensation — as It is in Original Conscious- 
ness, Principle. The organization is not 



220 



changed, but the starting point of action is 
changed from the carnal to the Spiritual. 

In current psychology it is commonly reckoned 
that there are nine faculties of the mind, but, as 
before mentioned, I see only eight. Conscious- 
ness I consider to be the experience-matrix in 
which the faculties play, and the stuff out of 
which ideas are made by them into feeling — 
emotion and sensation. 

By these faculties, the mind, when turned away 
from the outside, is capable of perceiving Truth. 
It appears to us as though the universe were 
apart from us. We know that this is not true. 
Every thing which we see on the outside has its 
father within, its psyche in our own conscious- 
ness. But the senses make it appear as if it 
were outside. 

By means of the cerebro-spinal system the 
faculties communicate, through the subjective 
mind, with our Source — Life. The conscious 
mind, as we have seen, is also attached to the 
senses, and communicates with the world of ob- 
jects. It has five senses, sight, hearing, taste, 
smell, and feeling — the latter an indispensable 
one to life — avenues which have been made for 
the soul-man to look through and see conscious- 
ness made visible and objective. 

221 



The conscious mind functions from outside, 
and, getting from the universe vibrations of 
things that are happening, receives and converts 
them into terms of feeling, which is stored up 
and becomes part of the consciousness of the 
soul-man. 

These faculties constitute what I call the 
mill of the mind, which deals with ideas, and 
converts them into terms of emotion and sensa- 
tion. It is constantly in action in one department 
or another, in the sub-consciousness or the self- 
consciousness, or both, most of the faculties 
having action in both realms. I am endeavor- 
ing to make it very clear to your minds that 
this mill of the mind constitutes an organi- 
zation for the purpose of abstracting ideas 
from the Spirit, the great Creator of the universe, 
and that the subjective side of that organization 
is constantly working day and night, for the 
purposes of maintenance. The Divine nature 
is grounded in the Substance God, and the 
faculties involuntarily and constructively play 
backwards and forwards between the human and 
the Original Consciousness. Reason, judgment, 
and will, as we know them, are faculties that 
work in the objective realm. The faculty of 
reason has the power of functioning by four 

222 



different modes in objective life: analysis, syn- 
thesis, induction and deduction. 

As we have seen, in subjective life, the faculty 
of reason only functions from one starting point, 
that is, deduction. It is well to remember, that 
while the conscious mind is active, there is work 
going on in the sub-conscious, of which realm 
we know nothing. The universal consciousness 
is the storehouse of everything that happens in 
this life, and it can easily enough be tapped by 
minds of a certain quality. Things happen 
which are perfectly inexplicable, except by the 
postulate that there is a realm of the mind of 
which we are only very vaguely and intermit- 
tently conscious. 

The soul-Substance of man may be likened to 
the sensitive plate of a photographer. It receives 
impressions, and according to the nature of these 
impressions, a register is made, that which is 
registered constituting the mind-stuff. The 
difference between the spirit and the soul is that 
the spirit is a replica of the Substance, within 
which is contained all Knowledge, and which is 
also the sensitive plate upon which is recorded 
whatever man experiences ; while the soul is the 
record of consciousness according to human con- 
ception, written on that plate. The individual 



223 



spirit of a man is the record of his experiences 
from the pure, subjective realm of Original Con- 
sciousness, written on the same sensitive plate of 
Its own Substance. It is amazing how the Great 
Silent Partner, who owns the whole organization 
absolutely, has even submitted His own Substance 
as a recording tablet of race-experience, has by 
His own Power and Wisdom done the original 
•creating, continues the maintenance, furnishes 
the power, and imparts to man a certain amount 
of instinctive intelligence by which he may direct 
himself; and yet the active partner on the sur- 
face pays no heed whatsoever to the fact that all 
this wonderful work has been repeating itself in 
each human being ever since the race came into 
life, as if the Great Silent One were insistently 
inviting him to lay hold of his divine birthright, 
and LIVE. 

Soul-feeling exists in man as a latency un- 
known to him. When vibrations come from the 
outside, they are sent up to the brain by the 
organs of sense, telegraphed thence to a gang- 
lionic centre, an organ of the sub-conscious mind, 
and that which lies there as substance, feeling, 
is telegraphed back in terms of emotion or sen- 
sation, or both. So the race has continued to 
perceive objects as if they were the reality, yet 

224 



all the time that we are looking upon them as. 
apart from ourselves, they have their real sub- 
stance in the psychical realm within. 

Underneath all this is the Great Subjective 
Entity, God. All the time that man is thinking^ 
himself apart from God, that he sprang from a. 
ferment, God is with him as the Life of the 
psychical and physical life. Man is not evolved 
far enough from the kindergarten to realize the 
Truth ; he is ignorant of the Great Life, and is, 
imagining that all that lies in the soul is from the 
soul-stuff of the universe ; while all the time this 
great Father of the universe is delivering Himself 
as life to the subjective man, and sustaining him 
by the same means as those by which the universe 
is sustained. The sub-conscious man is partially 
aware of this, but the self-conscious man is 
almost entirely oblivious. There are times when 
a man is in an exalted state and has some idea 
of God, when his consciousness seems to get 
right over Life Itself, when he has some inspira- 
tion of Truth, and begins to know something 
of his Principle, Life. "There is a spirit in 
man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth 
them understanding." 

Man in the human state is experiencing trans- 
actions in the world of objects, of personality: 

225 



these are being registered on the "sensitive plate," 
and go to make up what he calls himself. The 
spirit of man has its potentiality in God-Sub- 
stance, and is awaiting birth into his self-con- 
sciousness ; when a man has grown up, and the 
mind receives knowledge from the Most High 
within, this knowledge, which to the man is 
the experiencing of God within, is continually 
registered on the "sensitive plate," in the same 
way as in soul-life the objective has been regis- 
tered there. Thus the spirit of man is being 
born into self-consciousness, because the real 
Truth of Being is coming up into his brain. 
The child of God is being born, not all at once, 
but through the gradual experiencing of the 
great Truth of his Being. This may show it- 
self as wisdom in affairs; wisdom, goodness of 
some sort, translated into terms of the world. 
It is like the way in which a man is born into 
consciousness of the personal life. He is not 
born completely when ushered into the world as 
a babe ; he knows only that he is, and nothing 
more at first ; little by little he gets acquainted 
with things about him ; and he calls this knowl- 
edge ! 

Now we have not realized that this our present 
state of existence is the time and the place to 

226 



be born of the Spirit; we have supposed that it 
had to occur after death. This is not the teach- 
ing of Jesus or of Truth. The great Presence 
is with us now. We should realize the Truth 
now as vividly as we realize the mountains, trees, 
and valleys around us. 

Man is to learn of the Knowledge-Life which 
is in him now. In our present state we build 
up an idea of man as he is in the personal life, 
and that is our starting-point; but if we are to 
speak of man as he is in Truth, our starting- 
point would have to be God, Knowledge, Wis- 
dom. God is Original Consciousness, Original 
Feeling. When the faculties of the subjective 
mind work from the stand-point of the God-Life, 
instead of from that of the race-life, the objective 
faculties will catch the Spirit of God, man will 
begin to get a consciousness of God, and thus 
the natural man will become the spiritual man. 

God is our inheritance now; this is something 
to act upon, in the same way in which we have 
acted upon the inferences drawn from the natural 
universe. We are not conscious of our likeness 
to the race until we are born. Our first birth, 
in the flesh, is independent of ourselves. We 
know nothing of it. But, as I said, we are not 
completely born when ushered into this world. 

■>> 7 



We have to grow and develop in the self-con- 
scious life. We find that we are using God at 
every turn; now we are to grow into a self- 
consciousness of Him. God is Omniscience^ 
and we can see how He is the Source of all 
fundamental knowledge that man obtains from 
time to time. Seeing this, we realize that we 
must ourselves co-operate in bringing about our 
own birth into a consciousness of Spirit, Cause,, 
wherein all things lie before they are born,, 
before they become effect. If God creates the 
tree or the flower, it IS, in the consciousness of 
God, before it appears as object. Anything 
that exists in the consciousness of God always 
WAS. That which is represented in terms of 
sense by a tree does exist in terms of mind in 
the Spiritual Cause of all things, which is Knowl- 
edge. So, when we get to know that latent 
realm which is our birthright, we shall not need' 
to deal with objects from the existence stand- 
point, but shall go straight to where they are 
made. This is how a man gets a hundred-fold 
more in this life, as Jesus taught, when he finds 
the Kingdom of God. All that subsists, await- 
ing expression in the realm we call Spirit, IS,. 
just as truly in its latency, as after it is brought 
forth. There is as much Health in man at this. 

228 



moment, even while he is sickening and dying, 
as ever was, or ever will be. The only difference 
is that man has not appropriated what is there. 

As I cannot point out too often, man is not 
translated into the spiritual state by death. 
The spiritual state is one of knowing Truth. 
If a man is in a psychical state when he dies 
what may happen, no earth-born science can 
tell, but he is still in that psychical state, and 
the mere fact of dying is not likely to transform 
him into a spiritual state, since he is exhorted 
to know God now. 

We are opening our eyes to-day to the fact 
that we are inherent in God, our Substance. 
Recognizing this, we are putting forth efforts to 
become acquainted with God the Father, the 
Great Power within, which we have inherited, 
and to make use of It to th ehonor of that 
Power. One of the aspects of this inheritance 
is Health. We all need Health. The funda- 
mental world is full of It, but the mind must 
know It as Principle, for Health is something 
to be known, not to be barely experienced' as a 
condition, which, without our knowledge of It, 
will change from day to day. To know God as 
Health is to have perpetual health. It used to 
be thought spiritual to be patient and long- 

229 



suffering; to lie down "under God's hand," 
and more or less whine, but at the same time to 
know that the suffering was "the will of God." 
That was spiritual ! I once knew a woman who 
took to her bed under some disappointment 
which she looked upon as God's will; there she 
lay, year after year, with bed-clothes always 
clean and white, letting her mother wait upon 
her, receiving kind condolences and flowers, 
talking Scripture, and thinking all the time that 
God's hand was heavy; and I saw that woman 
got out of her bed in a trice, and sent about her 
business. Unconscious hypocrisy ! Disappoint- 
ment was the first thing, cowardly capitulation 
the second, last, the flattering assumption of 
the "Lord's will," "God's hand!" 

We used to think it spiritual to attend funerals 
and to condole with people. We never heard of 
Jesus attending a funeral, except to raise the 
dead. He never tried to console people by ex- 
horting them to bear their loss; He supplied it. 
I want to show the distinction between the true 
idea of spirituality and the one we have had. 
God is Knowledge, God is Spirit; and self- 
-evidently, as God is Spirit, to be spiritual would 
be to know ; not to blunder through the world, a 
candidate for accidents, sickness, and misery, 



230 



with no higher ambition than to bear them 
patiently ! 

We have seen the difference between the soul 
and spirit. The spirit is not yet born in man, 
and is only born in proportion as he acquires 
knowledge of the Father. To know God, Jesus 
said, is Eternal Life. I am convinced that we 
can arrive at knowing more and more about the 
Truth of God, because I find that I do, and that 
others do. 

Now, in applying this knowledge to healing, 
do we not see that the man who is ill is hyp- 
notized by his state of feeling? He thinks the 
particles of the body are ill, but it is the con- 
sciousness which is one with his body, that is ill. 
When the consciousness is ill, the body is bound 
to get ill too. Now once we admit that the 
affairs of soul and body are dealt with by means 
of the Intelligence-Principle, it is natural to see 
that we, having this Intelligence so near to us 
that in It "we live and more and have our 
Being," might well come into touch with It. 
We experience every day the effect of emotion 
upon bodily consciousness. If, when suffering 
from the emotion and sensation which we call 
illness, we are able to turn our minds from the 
consideration of the condition to the constructive 



231 



realm of the Principle within, thus setting the 
mind free to function from the within, what a 
wonderful change in feeling must quickly obtain ! 
We find, as a fact, that we are indeed able 
to govern conditions intelligently after this 
manner. 

XII. 

THE whole universe is one great WORD ; 
not the kind of word I am speaking 
now, but a perfect galaxy of words in objective 
hieroglyph. 

The Substance of all we see is God — Omni- 
science, Knowledge; because nothing that is 
has come forth without idea. Every object says, 
"I am an idea, I come to signal to you who live 
in the senses; I have a meaning, just as a word 
has a meaning; if you want to get at this mean- 
ing, you must know Knowledge, out of which 
I came; Knowledge is at the bottom of me, and 
it is the idea belonging to Knowledge that I 
voice. I do not stand here apart from you ; you 
have a realm of consciousness yet to open, which 
when opened will show me to you, and you will 
know what I mean. Meantime you can enjoy 
my beauty, or make use of me to feed your 

232 



body, but you have no idea yet what I really 
am." 

Every object created is evidence that it is 
created by the Almighty. It has a beneficent 
idea at the back of it, and is not alone that which 
is imaged by a sensuous race, not yet come into 
the conscious knowledge of its Source. Thus, 
again we arrive at the idea that the whole universe, 
which we cognize outside, has a mental origin. 

There is a realm not apart from man, where 
these things exist in the Substance, and the mind 
is the instrument by which man may know every- 
thing fundamentally. 

If we could go to the roots, of a rose-bush, 
before the bush had attained to any size, or borne 
any roses, and if we could interpret what is latent 
there, which will be expressed later on by many 
roses, we should realize that there is a point — in 
the sap — where the many roses are one. So too, 
behind that which we sense, there is a realm 
where everything, inclusive of man, is one. That 
realm is God the Father, to be known by the 
mind, and objectified by the senses, to be recog- 
nized and enjoyed. 

As I have said, there is just one Substance in the 
universe, one Spirit — that is, God. In the realm 
of God. everything that is to be, IS eternally; 

233 



otherwise it could not exist here on the sense- 
plane. It is there to be manifested, and when 
we know God, we shall know All. 

This is the inheritance with which each of us is 
endowed, which is back of every man; LIFE Itself,, 
or, when expressed in warm personal terms, God. 

When we come mentally to that realm where 
all things are before they are born or expressed, 
to that state where — if we speak of them at all — 
we speak of them as Cause, where they are 
before they come into the world of effect, we 
find that the effect is inherent in Cause before it 
is expressed. When it is expressed it becomes 
effect, but the Cause has not been diminished, 
and effect, even then, is not apart from its Cause. 
We have never looked upon God and man as 
being continuous Substance. When the man 
comes out of Substance, and becomes existence, 
he not only comes out of It, and evolves from It 
into a state of existence, but all the while 
remains in It. 

Because something is latent in my mind at 
this moment, not voiced, would it exist any the 
more because I had voiced it, than when it lay 
in the realm of Cause? 

There is just one First Cause, and that is the 
soul-Substance of every one. Each one builds his 

234 



conscious life and his sub-conscious life by means 
of, and over, this great Substance, Life. 

When we leave the place where things lie in 
Cause, and come to the realm of creation, there 
appear to be many spirits, many men, millions. 
Has Cause gone because It is expressed? Does, 
not the Substance and Essence of objects remain 
in the great Original Feeling at the back of 
these created things? 

This appearance of many is where indi- 
viduality comes in; man, latent in Cause, is. 
God unexpressed; he is no less Cause, and 
no more man, when he is expressed, than when, 
he is latent in Cause ; except for the latency,, 
there could be no man. That which IS can 
nerther be increased nor diminished; the IS- 
ness can, however, be amplified to our under- 
standing. 

This is the Substance of man, the Substance 
of the soul. Each one has the whole Principle 
of Knowledge within him, and with this he may 
have his experiences. When his mind can lay 
hold of this Principle of Knowledge, and draw 
out from It great grists of Wisdom, which the 
mill of the mind can furnish to man, then he 
brings into his own self-consciousness the feel- 
ing and sensation of the Substance, God; and 

235 



as he dees this, he forms his pneuma, and so he 
comes into hib great inheritance. 

In the realm of the great Pneuma, one dis- 
tinguishing feature is that everybody can have 
the whole. This is far beyond the comprehen- 
sion of the senses, where no such thing could 
occur; one person could not have the whole, and 
every one else have it equally, but in the mental 
realm it is possible. All is here for each of us. 
When we come into the Knowledge of this 
great Substance, and when the man makes use 
of It, as he now does of objects, he will become 
spiritual, and the spirit will be that of the God- 
consciousness. Man will then know how God, 
Knowledge, Wisdom, Health feels ; and, know- 
ing, will interpret It into terms of thought. 

In the body we have an organization continu- 
ally manifesting phenomena. Look into the 
body and you will see certain action going on 
in the different organs all the time. Now the 
body is continuously undergoing renewal, to 
make up for the daily loss in the action of its 
chemistry. It is supplied with food; but the 
man might be supplied with food abundantly, 
yet, except for the desire in him to eat, the body 
would begin to fail day by day. The substance 
of his eating then, is his desire to eat; and the 

236 



desire, together with the understanding of his 
Substance, would create something to eat even in 
the desert; for the whole universe will turn 
over to normal desire, coupled with under- 
standing. 

This process is taking place in the man every 
day; first desire, then eating, then the catalytic 
transformation of food, then the chemistry of 
assimilation, until finally it becomes flesh. All 
this is a process related to the outside world, 
which is a sign of what is taking place in the 
subjective world, in the world where things do 
not appear to the senses, but appear to the 
mind. If we observe the process of food being 
made into flesh, we shall get a pantomimic 
correspondence of what is taking place in the 
soul-life. Just as the body requires food for 
its sustenance, and requires it from that of 
which it is itself constructed, namely, the 
elements; so the soul, in its human state, so 
long as it knows no more, must have appropriate 
food to put through its mill of consciousness. 
Since man, to sense-cognition, as he stands in 
the universe, is a product of physical and 
psychical race-life, and since the race has lived 
with its mind polarized on the world of sense, 
as though this were all which there is to be had 



^37 



now and here, it is natural that the soul should 
continue to desire, for its renewal, experience as 
regards the soul, and food as regards the body,, 
out of that which is to be obtained from the 
realm of personality of people and of objects. 
The whole race is polarized in mind towards the 
things taking place on earth ; the natural desire 
of the mind, therefore, is to get to know all that 
is going on in the world of objects and of person- 
ality: and he, who is only in the human state 
of existence, will be content with letting the 
mind be taken up with things objective, with 
intellectual pursuits, with going to theatres, or 
parties, dressing, or even talking nonsense. 

Now if a man habitually takes wholesome 
diet of such kind, so that the consciousness 
within be fed on nothing worse than the normal 
human experience, all this is not destructive in 
its nature, but is innocent of anything except 
what is kind and good in its own harmless way. 
The soul will then show forth in the body-life 
healthful optimism ; we shall find that such 
an one is rarely ill, and then generally only for a 
moment, when something has come over him to 
change his habit of health. This is harmless 
food, but there is food for the mind which is 
abnormal and destructive. How often do we 

238 



ruminate in some such fashion as this, "Twenty 
years of my life were spoilt by that miserable 
mistake I made," and so forth. All too fre- 
quently is the history of Rasselas enacted, who, 
as the story goes, had been unjustly imprisoned 
for twenty years in the darkness, and was said to 
have wept during the whole period of his in- 
carceration; then, on being finally set free, he 
came forth into the sunlight, and wept for 
twenty years more, because he had lost the 
previous twenty years of his life through in- 
justice. This is feeding on refuse. Let us learn 
to feed on what is pure and holy, wise and 
strong. 

The belief of the human being is that he lives 
by bread; by bread we mean, of course, the 
elements of the physical universe ; and unless 
he can get them regularly, he is in dire trouble,, 
he is weak and ill. He believes that he must 
have fresh air, always fresh air; a certain degree 
of heat; that the outer world has a definite 
power over him, against which he is helpless :. 
that he is a poor little thing, walking around in 
this infinite space, which is swarming with 
microbes and bacilli, so small that they are not 
discernible, yet which have the significance to 
him of elephants, of mammoths; he believes in 

239 



all these things, and whatever he believes in he 
is giving to the mill of his mind to deal with as 
food for his soul. 

His cognition of objects stimulates ideas in 
his consciousness, but consciousness cannot be 
for ever sustained on a fiction, and will starve 
to death, unless there is something higher and 
greater to take its place. He may live with 
those ideas to sixty, eighty or even a hundred 
years, and then down he goes, because that is 
not true food for the mind. He is living on that 
which has been used up, done with ; living on 
condition, not on the Substance, Life ; therefore 
why should he not die? Jesus gave utterance 
to this, saying, "It is written, man shall not 
live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God." Now this 
is directly against the ideas of the material 
human being, who lives on the product of the 
ground. Jesus said, "not by bread alone." In 
our present state we do need bread too. We 
must not imagine that we can immediately say, 
"I will live only by every Word that proceeds 
out of the mouth of God." Because we have 
the perception of this possibility, it does not 
follow that we have arrived at the place where 
we can demonstrate it. Now what is meant 



240 



by the "Word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
of God?" It is a figure. 

A word is an utterance ; that utterance has a 
meaning. The meaning of things in God con- 
stitutes their spirit. The mind needs this spiritual 
consciousness in order to really live, because the 
normal food of the spirit of man is of its Substance, 
and the spiritual consciousness is eternal and has 
no death. The use of this food for the mind, 
together with the ordinary edibles for the body, 
is the way shown us by the Almighty, through 
Jesus, to continuous living. Jesus said, "I am 
come that they might have Life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly." 

I am trying to show that the whole purpose of 
living is to enter into this living consciousness, 
not merely to perpetuate bod-ily existence. The 
race has taken the ground that the body must be 
kept alive, dealing with the body as body. Our 
aim must be to enter into that living conscious- 
ness which is worthy of perpetuation, that thus 
we be not subject to death. It is not the body 
that is alive ; the body is a realm of our con- 
sciousness which we are to make use of wisely, 
in accordance with its province as a dependency 
of the higher realm of consciousness. It is the 
latter which is to be kept alive, and it will deal 



241 



with the body. When ideas cease, life ceases. 
The metaphysical organization of man, which 
is the intelligence-realm of man, is responsible 
for physical action. The metaphysical depart- 
ment is the real department of man. That the 
body may live, this metaphysical, real, mental 
department of man, belonging to his under-self, 
needs to be put in touch with the Substance out 
of which it is created. It is in touch with It at 
the present time, as far as body-building is con- 
cerned; but the only way in which it can put 
itself into conscious touch, so that this body- 
building shall be healthfully and lastingly main- 
tained, is for the cranial brain to recognize its 
birthright, and also that it is dependent on the 
Almighty, both for its life, and for its knowledge. 

When we abstract upon an idea that corre- 
sponds to Wisdom, Health, Life, the attention of 
the subjective mind is automatically directed to 
the Principle of its being, and begins to function 
consciousness from that source. 

So these words of God, words of Spirit, of 
which Jesus spoke, are to us in truth, words of 
Life. Jesus had been talking high Truth, and 
He said, "the words that I speak unto you, they 
are spirit and they are life." Why? Because 
these words are grounded in Substance, and the 

242 



mind of man, when in touch with Substance- 
feeling, draws from the Most High. 

Self-consciousness formed by daily commune 
with the Most High, is formed of the bread of 
Life, jesus said, "I am the bread of life." He 
also said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." 
The Substance, Truth, is the bread of Life. I, 
in my divine birthright and consciousness, am 
in touch with divine Substance ; I, the divine 
nature, subsist on the bread of Life. "I am 
the bread of Life ; he that cometh to me shall 
never hunger." I am delivering to you the bread 
of Life. I AM is the bread of Life, I AM is 
God. "If any man eat of this bread, he shall 
live for ever." "Moses gave you not that bread." 
He told them this because they believed that the 
manna, a material bread, which their fathers had 
seen and eaten, was the bread from heaven. 
Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; your 
fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are 
dead ; this is the bread which cometh down from 
heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die." 
The word "eaj" here is a metaphor referring to 
the mind; eating spiritually means receiving 
into one's heart the consciousness — and feeling 
there the true spirit — of the Substance-words. 
Living thus from day to day, a man will not die. 

243 



We are sometimes told that Jesus was referring 
to "spiritual death," a contradiction of terms; 
spirit cannot die; there is no spiritual death. 
The only death we know is physical and psychical 
death. He was speaking in our own terms. 
Death means death ; these people died. Jesus 
told us that we could live; and yet all through 
these centuries the race has been going down to 
the grave, until, perceiving that He spoke of sal- 
vation now, and of the whole man, some shall 
arise and begin to LIVE! This will be the new 
heaven and the new earth. 

We have built up a psychical and bodily organ- 
ization from appearances and from the ground. 
Now we are to build up a spiritual consciousness 
and a spiritual body, by means of experiences of 
the Spirit, and by knowing truly and living truly 
the God-Life. We have what is called a physical 
body, that is to say, there is an intelligence of a 
psychical kind that underlies our bodily existence. 
What is a spiritual body? It is one formed by 
the man leaving the psychical realm, and dwell- 
ing in the spiritual realm, where things are before 
they are ever voiced. There the man comes into 
contact with Knowledge, takes it, lives it, and 
voices it in wisdom in various ways. He now 
conducts his affairs in physical life with wisdom 



244 



that comes from its original Source. Such ex- 
perience forms a spiritual body. Just as the 
psychical and physical body is formed by the 
experiences of the outside world — the assimila- 
tion of its ideas and elements — so the spiritual 
body is formed by the assimilation of spiritual 
ideas. 

We saw that the sympathetic system has offices 
for digesting food and making it into flesh ; and 
this same system maintains offices on the other 
side, for taking psychical food and making it 
into soul. Digestion is the physical parallel of 
the mental process of the understanding and 
assimilation of ideas. The thoughts we receive 
day by day are taken into that mental department 
which has to do with assimilation of ideas. 
Sometimes they are so vigorous that they work 
out very rapidly in old age, wrinkles, and grey 
hair. Sometimes, on the other hand, a pleasing 
emotion will make a person look ten years 
younger in an instant. Physical digestion de- 
pends upon psychical digestion. We do not 
usually employ the word digestion when speaking 
of the psychical life, but it is just as appropriate 
for the one as for the other. Ideas are taken in, 
sink into the consciousness, and have their in- 
fluence on the physical commerce; they are 

245 



broken up, just as food is broken up, into fine 
pieces; so these particles of ideas are put through 
the mill of the mind, and digestion is accom- 
plished. The psychical consciousness then works 
them out into bodily form ; and if this mental 
food has been abnormal in character, we get 
violent trouble in the way of pains or misery. 
It may not stop there; it may work out into 
some organic misfortune, a tumor perhaps. 
What we receive into the mind without 
question is a very serious matter ; it does 
not end there. There are, however, organs 
placed in the body for beneficent purposes, 
to minimize the effect of ideas of an untoward 
nature, thus giving us a chance of prolonging 
our existence and of overcoming our ignorance. 
Were it not for these inhibitory offices, we 
should run our race very quickly. 

Jesus had many ways of uttering His Truth. 
For instance, He also spoke of there being 
within man "a well of water springing up into 
everlasting life." 

Every man, every flower, every object in the 
universe has a meaning; and unless it has a 
meaning behind it that refers to the Most High, 
there is no IS-ness in it. Those conditions 
which are not in harmony with the Most High, 

246 



are the creations of a mind that has fed on 
husks — on false ideas which cannot be brought 
into any true form ; which have no true Sub- 
stance at the back of them to give them endur- 
ing quality. I might write a word, but if to 
you and to me it had no meaning, to us it 
would not be a word. Every object showing 
forth intelligence, order, and harmony, is a 
word meaning something in the realm of 
Knowledge. Once more I say, we must not 
be deceived by appearances, and think that 
people and natural objects are outside the mind; 
they all voice, all speak, all sing the fact, that the 
Almighty can be perceived within and enjoyed 
by the mind. 

The psychical consciousness must pass away 
with the on-growth of the spiritual li/e, because 
it is built of objective experience, the true sig- 
nificance of which has not been comprehended. 
This is how it is in the regeneration, where there 
will be no death. I am speaking in ultimates 
now; there is much to be done first. While a 
man has the psychical organization which can do 
his bidding, he should so get into touch with his 
spiritual Substance, that gradually the psyche 
may become pneuma. 



247 



That which thou are thou dreamest not — so vast, 
That lo ! time present, time to be, time past, 
Are but the sepals of thine opening soul, 
Whose flower shall fill the Universe at last. 

Thou ponderest of the moon, the stars, the sun, 
Whence the winds gather, how the waters run, 
But all too lightly deemest of thyself, 
Which art a myriad miracles in one. 



My beloved, heir to Mine estate ! 

Come to Me swiftly, though the hour be late ! 
Those My five envoys, whom I sent to seek, 
Have lured thee from Me, and alone I wait. 

1 wait to see thy feet with wisdom shod, 
Disease and error banished at thy nod : 
Sinless, self-dominant, adult, divine, 

I wait to see thee walk the earth, a God.f 

XIII. 

WHAT is that which is first of all? What 
must be before anything appears ? It is 
Life, it is Knowledge — Knowledge to be known. 
We see then that both Life and Knowledge are 
fundamental. From man's point of view, we 
must have life first, and then we must know 
that there is Knowledge to know. If we were 
to go back in race-experience to the imaginary 

t"OuT of the Silence/' by James Rhoades. (London: John 
Lane; New York: John Lane Company.) 



248 



point where the race began, we should see that 
there was a time when something existed in the 
form of protoplasm or ferment, terms which we 
have used to denote the beginning of the human 
being. Now if we look down through the years 
of experience, and transplant ourselves in im- 
agination back to that particle of ferment which 
contained within it the soul of man with its 
thinking faculties in potentiality, and if we call 
this ferment the beginning of life, the inherency 
of this ferment would practically, to the human 
being, constitute the ultimate possibility of 
knowledge for him to know. 

From this point of view we should deduce 
that man derived from this ferment everything 
which he had when he came into the world of 
self-consciousness ; so that all the store of con- 
sciousness that he possessed would be traced 
back to this starting-point. Let us notice the 
first thing that was before the physical genera- 
tion of any individual human being. The first 
thing was desire. Now there .are two kinds of 
desire. There is the desire that one is conscious 
of, and the desire that is latent in the organiza- 
tion. Without this, active or latent, nothing 
could come forth. This, then, is the substance 
of the manifested human being — desire. So 



249 



that each individual is a product of desire, even 
though he may not have been wanted in the 
world, his advent even being considered a mis- 
fortune. 

Desire is mental. If man is mental in his 
being, anything that can appeal to the mental, 
or to the feeling-nature, will appeal to him ; and 
by that mentality the elements of his body will 
begin to be moved, as they were moved from 
day to day in the body of the child; but the 
first step in the process is desire. This desire 
moves man to bring about conditions through 
which its fulfilment may be accomplished, and 
thus takes place the inception of a human being. 
What was it that gave desire to the human 
being? If it be this protoplasm or ferment, then 
we should have to call that Life the Omnipotent, 
for in it would be contained all the power that 
could be realized. But those who apprehend 
something of the Truth, and those who in the past 
have experienced somewhat of the spiritual, have 
known, by faith at least, that we originated in 
God, the Eternal and Omnipotent Omniscience; 
and that, behind anything that could be seen or 
traced by the senses as a beginning, is some- 
thing that cannot be seen, cannot be traced by 
the senses, but which stands for Life the Omni- 



250 



potent, for Life the Omniscient, for Life present 
and Life to come — Infinite Life. 

We can see that man, originating in all this, 
is in possession at this moment of Infinite Life, 
Infinite Goodness, Infinite Intelligence, and 
Wisdom : that all this is latent in his conscious- 
ness, to be reached by the faculties of the mind, 
and brought forth into his self-consciousness ; 
so when we ask the question, who gave the 
desire by which the human being originated? 
we must answer, Life the Omnipotent : because 
Life the Omnipotent, the Omniscient, in the 
perfectly intelligent fashion in which the human 
being is constructed and brought into a state 
of self-consciousness, has shown its Omnipo- 
tence, Its Omniscience. Man with his conscious 
mind cannot do such work as this. He has an 
Intelligence within him greater indeed than he 
knows, but he can perceive Its workings, and 
now he is getting ready to become more con- 
scious of, to lay hold of, and to enjoy It. So 
when we ask what was fundamentally respon- 
sible for the bringing forth of the human being, 
we must reply, Life the Omnipotent, the Omni- 
scient. Who attended, all the way through, the 
movements in consciousness and in the elements, 
which culminated in the formation of a perfect 

251 



body, with the perfect system of Intelligence, 
and the absolute Principle of Knowledge asso- 
ciated with it? Who attended this organization 
on its way from ferment to its culmination in a 
human being, starting out on his journey to 
know himself? Life the Omnipotent, Life 
the Omniscient. Who made everything ready? 
Whence the desire of the unborn child, yet un- 
knowing, to be clothed upon with self-conscious- 
ness, causing it to appropriate the food which 
the mother had provided, and thus fashion for 
itself a body? Life the Omnipotent, the Omni- 
scient. And when the child stands up in the 
objective world, having breathed the breath of 
life, the breath of self-conscious life, it is now 
the pulse of Life the Omnipotent that beats 
through it, and it is the work of Life the Omni- 
scient that we behold. No human being can 
do such work ! The conscious mind cannot do 
it. We can readily see that there is something 
associated with the conscious mind of man, that 
knows infinitely more than it does. 

Who attends the child on his way up from 
having a mere ray of imagination or self-con- 
sciousness? Who attends him as his constant 
provider? That same One who was his provider 
before he knew that he was. That same One 



252 



attends him — Life the Omnipotent, the Omni- 
scient. The great Principle of Knowledge be- 
comes his servant! The great Principle of 
Wisdom becomes the servant of man, and gets 
everything ready for his self-consciousness. 

We have seen that Life the Omnipotent is the 
starting point of all, that desire — the desire of 
the man and woman to express and bring forth — 
is only the secondary cause of the bringing into 
self-consciousness of each human being, who up 
to that moment was slumbering in God. Thus, we 
see that the secondary cause also is mental; it is 
of the heart. So that man is a mental being. He 
is put into possession of his body and the faculties 
of his mind, and now he starts off to make prac- 
tical application of what has been provided for 
him to use during the years in which he is 
gaining knowledge. He sets out, not knowing 
himself, not knowing anything except that he is. 
Now in this state of ignorance — knowing nothing 
of the great mental Substance behind him, know- 
ing nothing of the great providing care that has 
been exercised by his Original Father, God; 
knowing nothing of his connection with the 
Infinite Intelligence, his great Silent Partner — 
is it any wonder that, when he begins to make 
use of his organization himself, he gets into 



'53 



trouble? Is it any wonder that he becomes ill 
and miserable? No, it has been shown by ex- 
perience that man has not known enough to deal 
with himself wisely; that while Life the Omni- 
potent had been providing all along, and con- 
tinuing to provide and maintain all the way up 
to manhood, he was unconscious of the Power 
behind him, of the Wisdom at his back. 

Now if he realized his true Origin, what would 
be the most natural thing for him to do, when 
the organization got out of order? Would it not 
be to go straight to Life Itself, to Knowledge 
Itself, his own Original Father — his Father from 
far back, when he existed only in mental poten- 
tiality? There is his Father; there is his God; 
there too is the mental organization, that was 
started on the race-side through desire. It is all 
of God. 

I want to bring to you the reality of the 
Presence of God : to show how it may be a prac- 
tical reality to you and to me. I want you to 
realize clearly that God is not an abstraction, but 
that God is a Substance ever attending us, ever 
at the back of our organization, not unapproach- 
able, nor to be crept to, whining, with depreciation 
of our true selves ; but rather to be approached 
with head uncovered, and the happy feeling of 



254 



one who knows that he is in the presence of 
the best Friend he could ever have, Who has 
done everything for him, Who has brought him 
to where he is, and beside Whom there is none 
else. 

The subject to-day is "Talking to Life." 
There appear to be two kinds of Life; there is the 
life we call mortal life, secondary; and there is 
the Life we call immortal Life, primary. Mortal 
life is not Life, but it stands for It. It tells that 
there is something greater than itself. That 
greater is the One Life, which translates Itself 
into the secondary terms. We are always talk- 
ing to Life, but generally we talk to this secondary 
or soul-life of the human being, which comes and 
goes, manifests itself in the body, and vanishes. 
When we talk to that kind of life, we get only 
relative results ; that kind of life is psychical life. 
The life of the body is the soul; the Life of the 
soul is God. If we only talk to soul-life or 
psychical life — for no matter what we are saying, 
even though it appertain only to the mundane, 
we are talking to Life — we are still making a 
register in the soul-consciousness. We are speak- 
ing from Life, and we are turning back our speech 
through terms of emotion into life again, into 
psychical and soul-life. In Life "we live and 

255 



move and have our being," so that, no matter 
what we are thinking, we are talking to Life, 
whether we are using good and true words, or idle 
words ; but the latter bring no Life-response. 
We must hold up to Life such images as corre- 
spond to It, for they are drafts on Life that must 
always be honored. It is no use talking to Life 
in language that is not correspondent to Being. 
When we do this, we are only speaking to 
secondary life, and that of very short duration. 
What we must all learn to do is to talk to God, 
that is to Life Eternal, to That which we do not 
see, to That which we are in our being, and of 
Which we desire to become conscious. 

We know something of the one Life-Principle 
of the universe, and something also of the facul- 
ties of the mind, those faculties that take hold of 
Life, just as the hands take hold of objects. We 
can perceive Life, but not through the senses ; 
they do not function a true perception of Life ; it 
is only by a purely mental conception of the 
immutable Substance behind the senses, at the 
back of the mind, that we may become self-con- 
scious of Life. All the faculties can be used in 
taking hold of Life. 

Life is the servant of all ; the good servant, 
who never refuses to do our bidding when we are 

256 



in earnest : yet Life is the greatest of all, the boun- 
tiful One, the One who always gives and never 
receives ; never looks for anything in return. It is 
absolutely unselfish. Life is complete in Itself; 
It knows nothing but what is of Its own Sub- 
stance, in Its own image and likeness. Life, the 
Almighty One, meek and lowly, is behind all that 
we see, never forcing Itself into our consciousness, 
always immanent, awaiting our perception of It. 
It prepares and offers a bountiful table for us, but 
we must eat — must partake of these bounties 
through the faculties of the mind. We are one 
with the Infinite, we cannot get away from It, 
but we have yet to come into conscious touch 
with It. We cannot accomplish this by the 
senses — looking from the without inward, but we 
can know It by looking from within outward — 
playing on Life with our faculties, as we touch 
with our fingers the keys of a musical instru- 
ment. It is by means of Life that we think, that 
we speak; there is no lack of anything in us. 
Are we starving? Hungry for what we call life? 
Let us take and eat. Life is never away from 
us for a second of time ; always to be known, 
but we must know; always to be relied upon, 
but we must rely; we must open the door and 
discover It for ourselves. 



257 



What gave us the highest and most beautiful 
emotion of love, or what we took for love, 
which we ever had? Life the Omnipotent. It 
was love, but only the sensuous correspondence 
of Love ; this the Heart of it we have never 
known, and so we have much misused it. We 
found out that we had love, but we did not find 
out what Love IS. We had an emotion, a 
conception associated with the senses ; it was a 
hint to us that there is something tremendous 
in our feeling within, which can touch Life Itself, 
and give us a sensation of Eternity. 

When we take grounds opposed to Life, Life 
shows us that this is not Wisdom, by the feel- 
ing aroused in us. Otherwise we should never 
learn what Truth and Beauty are. Life is al- 
ways giving us our warning. 

Jesus taught us how to pray, and also how not 
to pray. His teaching was that we should talk 
directly to God, to the Father which is in secret. 
The Father which is in secret is Being Itself, 
which cannot appear to the senses ; but this secret 
One can appear to the mind, can illuminate the 
mind, and flood it with Original Knowledge, 
Original Life. 

I want to recall some of the utterances of 
Jesus regarding prayer. In the first place he 

258 



said, "When ye pray, be not as the hypocrites, 
for they love to pray standing in the synagogues 
and in the corners of the streets that they may 
be seen of men." Their idea was of course an 
objective God, so they prayed objective prayers. 
Their idea was of a personal being who could 
stand up before them in terms of existence, and 
talk to them — the Almighty of the universe ! 
Being cannot change its place as Being, and 
become existence. No matter what forms of 
existence come forth from It, It will always re- 
main Being. Then Jesus said, "use not vain 
repetition" — vain repetition; this does not mean 
that repetition with a purpose may not have its 
uses. We must not repeat a prayer, just because 
it has been written for us. We must mean it 
with all our hearts. 

Prayer and fasting seem to go together in the 
teaching of Jesus. What is fasting? The pop- 
ular conception of fasting is going without food 
as a discipline; but while fasting in the sense- 
realm, we should be feasting in the mental realm 
on spiritual food — the realization of our Divine 
Substance — hence we should not be of a sad 
countenance. We must realize that our strength 
comes from our Life-Principle. We take food to 
supply the waste of the body ; we get our strength, 



259 



our knowledge, our life, from God. When we 
recognize this, we can forego twelve, or forty, or 
a hundred meals, even, without suffering, and 
there are those who have proved this ; but to do 
so, we must live on spiritual food only ; we must 
abstain mentally, as well as physically, from the 
food of the world, and this is the true fasting. 
Then we fast as masters, not as slaves. 

Jesus went into the wilderness to settle this 
question once for all for Himself, and as an ex- 
ample to the world; and it had to be settled be- 
fore He would eat. That moment when the 
temptation was full upon Him, was the moment 
to settle it. 

Further, Jesus told us, "When thou prayest, 
enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut 
thy door, pray . . " We must remember that Jesus 
was teaching spiritual things, that he was teach- 
ing metaphysics, but since words can be used 
physically as well as spiritually, those who do not 
realize the spiritual interpretation, can take the 
statement literally. I knew one man at least 
who built a small room in his house as a prayer 
closet, and insisted on his children going there 
every day at the same hour to pray. But what 
does this "inner chamber" mean metaphysically? 
If we shut ourselves into an inner chamber, it 

260 



puts us out of communication with the sensuous 
life. There is nothing to attract our attention; 
our eyes and ears are stopped; we are still. To 
be still in the body, however, is not enough; real 
stillness is to be still in the mind. This enter- 
ing the inner chamber would mean, then, making 
a rift in the consciousness of daily life; fixing 
the whole attention of the mind upon God. 
Shutting the door means barring out any ideas 
that are not according to pur desire and purpose. 
We are then not thinking of, not feeling, any- 
thing that belongs to our ordinary avocations. 
In that state we are praying to our Father, who 
is a Spiritual, not a sensuous, Being; using 
spiritual terms, purely spiritual terms, because 
they alone bring us into touch with Spiritual 
Being. "And the Father which seeth in secret 
shall reward you openly." That is, when we 
get our faculties right over the idea of our Maker 
and at one with our Principle, and our minds 
perfectly still, we begin silently to voice thoughts 
of what we desire from our Father, and at once 
the mechanism of the mind lays hold of those 
ideas, and we come out of our condition of 
prayer with a feeling of renewal. The wisdom 
to do whatever it is our need to do, will be given 
to us, the kind of wisdom we have called for. 

261 



If we are praying to our Father which is in 
secret, we shall use words which are correspond 
dential to what He IS. This would be a direct way 
of talking to Him. We must communicate with 
Life by holding such conceptions as correspond 
to, and are worthy of, Life, and we shall see how 
they will be worked out in the objective realm. If 
our ordinary life is beset with difficulties requiring 
wisdom, which it always is, then we should ask 
for wisdom. God is wisdom. Therefore, at such 
times, this word is the idea that we should hold 
in our minds, to the exclusion of everything 
else; we should hold it as our idea of God, of 
Substance, of Principle, of Knowledge ; then our 
whole subjective mental organization within 
would function from Original Feeling, and wis- 
dom would come. It does come. "If ye shall 
ask anything in my name, I will do it." We 
have taken this expression "the name of Jesus/' 
very literally. Jesus was the name given to the 
human personality, and we have thought that if 
we just said "in Jesus' name," this was carry- 
ing out His idea. Jesus Himself gave us one 
of His names. He said, "I am the Truth." "If 
ye shall ask anything in my name" means, if 
you ask anything in Truth, of Truth, it shall 
be done. That is what we have to learn to-day. 

262 



It is an education in things spiritual to learn 
how to approach our Father, God, the great 
Mental Substance of the universe. We should 
at least take as much pains to learn to know 
God, as we take to know facts belonging to 
the material universe. When we draw out the 
spiritual meaning of this teaching we find that 
true prayer does not consist in asking for things 
to wear, or for daily physical food, but in 
sitting quietly with the great idea in the mind 
of knowing the Truth within ; and knowledge of 
the Truth, thus gained, will carry with it the 
wisdom to get that which is needful. The mind 
should not be fixed on objects in prayer, but on 
God — should be still with the great Wisdom of 
the universe; during this luminous stillness will 
be evoked That which will translate Itself in 
natural ways into whatsoever things we need. 

Jesus also evidently intended to teach prayer to 
the people in a relative sense, because when He 
gave them the Lord's Prayer, He put it forth in 
such terms as would appeal to the human beings of 
the time, who did not, and could not, understand 
all at once His spiritual teaching, but were for 
ever taken up with the greatness of His person- 
ality, and with the wonder of what He could do. 
But He gave high teaching as well, that might 

263 



be comprehended by those who had attained a 
more spiritual state. To them He said, "all 
things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe 
that ye have received them, and ye shall have 
them." If we believed that we had a blessing, 
we should not pray as though we had it not. 

To illustrate, as He always did illustrate, His 
words, when He stood at the grave of Lazarus, and 
prayed in the affirmative sense, "I thank Thee 
that Thou hast heard me, and I knew that Thou 
hearest me always," while Lazarus was still in 
his grave ! — He simply took the highest of His 
teaching and spoke it aloud for the sake of the 
people, that they might understand and believe. 
When He had said this, "I thank Thee that 
Thou hast heard me. And I knew that Thou 
hearest me always :", He cried, "Lazarus, come 
forth !" Jesus knew that His Father always 
heard Him ; and He taught us to pray in the 
same spirit, believing that we already have that 
for which we ask. 

We do not always keep our money in our 
houses ; we have it at our banks, and our minds 
are at rest about it. We must believe that we 
have the blessing, and we have it! In the realm 
of Principle everything that may be produced 
IS. Realizing that what we need for immediate 

264 



use only requires to be brought out of its latent 
store in Principle — just as money must be drawn 
from the bank for use — we call the mind back to 
its Principle with the word, and lo ! we have it. 

We wonder sometimes why we do not get the 
blessing when we pray. We say we believe ; but 
there are two kinds of belief. The mere in- 
tellectual belief is not enough. The quick 
burning of the heart, the intense realization that 
our prayers are answered, it is that which con- 
stitutes true prayer, full belief. 

At another time Jesus gave an illustration of the 
two men who went up to the temple to pray, the 
one a Pharisee, and the other a publican; the 
Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 
"God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men 
are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this 
publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of 
all that I possess." Notice that everything the 
Pharisee prided himself on doing was material. 
But the poor publican would not so much as lift 
his eyes unto heaven, saying, "God be merciful 
to me, a sinner." And Jesus adds, "I tell you 
this man went down to his house justified rather 
than the other." Did you ever notice what a 
qualified statement that is concerning the prayer 
of the publican ? He prefers it to the self-satisfied 

265 



boasting of an egregious egotist, that is all. 
Of the two, there is more chance for one who 
belittles himself altogether in God's sight, than 
for the man who blatantly vaunts his own worthi- 
ness. Jesus does not say that this was the perfect 
thing by any means ; and yet the prayers of the 
Christian world are based upon this "rather than 
the other" ! 

In the parable of the prodigal son we have an 
example of what real prayer is. His is an ex- 
perience every man must have, to discover that, 
from the human standpoint, apart from Life, he 
is nothing. We have to see that we are worth- 
less as personal beings. The prodigal had got 
to that place. He felt that he was worth noth- 
ing. But he did not get up next day, and the 
next, and the next, saying, "what a miserable 
sinner I am!" he walked straight off to his 
father, thus beginning to carry out his purpose 
of telling him that which he had realized for 
himself amongst the swine; but his father said, 
"never mind what you have done, you are my 
son all the same, and we cannot do away with 
this truth ; come right in and sit down." 

This shows what we have to do; not to be 
always whining about our nothingness ; the 
Almighty knows that we are made in His image 

266 



and likeness. There is no spiritual word to 
answer to nothingness ; He cannot take notice 
of any such sayings as that. It is on human 
premises that we are nothing. Try the world, 
and find that it is nothing; it is worth while to 
find out that on the physical plane there is noth- 
ing but death, and then come home, and begin 
to LIVE. 

Now let us turn the Lord's prayer into the 
affirmative. You cannot teach a Hottentot the 
same thing that you can teach to a person who 
is full of the civilization of to-day. You must 
begin where he is. No one can hold an idea of God 
which is beyond the state of evolution at which 
he has arrived. The conception of God must 
differ in every mind. To one recognizing only 
the realm of personal existence, the personal will 
be the highest conceivable; such an one is still 
in the kindergarten, but he can evolve in con- 
sciousness to higher ideas, and a new realm will 
then open to him. The objective religion of the 
childhood of the race is not to be condemned, but 
when we come to the greater light, we do not 
want to stay gazing at the puny spark ; neverthe- 
less let us be thankful for that which has lighted 
us thus far. 

The teaching: concerning: prayer must be rela- 

267 



tive; but those, who have gone far enough to see 
what the real significance of prayer is, can take the 
illustration of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus, 
and apply that same idea to the Lord's prayer. 
"Our Father which art in heaven," "heaven" 
signifying a state of happiness, of bliss, of illum- 
ination. "Hallowed be thy name." "Thy 
name is hallowed" — recognized as holy, or, if 
apart from the original, the English word be 
pressed to its root-meaning, then, in accordance 
with the Master's teaching, we may render — 
Wholeness or Allness is Thy name. "Thy king- 
dom come" — Thy kingdom is come. This is the 
prayer of the man who is in his "inner cham- 
ber," who has shut the door against his trials, 
and has just opened his mind to the Infinite. 
In this state he says, "Thy kingdom is come, 
Thy will is done on earth as it is in heaven" — in 
the psyche or soul, as in the Spirit, it might be 
said. "Thou givest us this day our daily bread, 
and forgivest us our trespasses, as we have 
forgiven those who have trespassed against us. 
Thou leadest us not into temptation but deliverest 
us from evil, for Thine is the Kingdom, the 
Power, and the Glory." 

While it is perfectly natural for one who is in 
that state of evolution that he fears evil, and has 

268 



not arrived at a true idea of God, to pray not to 
be led into temptation, it would be quite in- 
appropriate for one who had perceived a higher 
idea of Truth, to continue to do so. It is 
written in the Scriptures, "let no man say when 
he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God 
cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth 
He any man." Then again, it would seem more 
natural for one who trusted in the Faith and 
Wisdom of the Most High to say rather, "I 
would gladly be led by Thee, even into temp- 
tation, for I know that if Thou go with me I am 
safe. Anywhere, anywhere, so Thou but lead !" 

This is the way I should like to talk to God, 
because though we might not think it very wise 
to brave temptation alone, yet, conscious that 
we have with us the protection of the Almighty 
we should be glad to go even into the fire. 

I think we must all see that the prayer — if He 
gave it just in this form — was a simple and relative 
one, to suit the state of evolution of the lowest 
of those who came in contact with His teaching. 
But He did not leave those who were more ad- 
vanced without a clear-cut idea of what prayer 
should be. 

We find no warrant in Jesus' teaching for 
calling ourselves worms of the dust and miserable 

269 



sinners; in fact, common sense and enlighten- 
ment ought to tell us that we are libelling God 
by calling ourselves worms. Just think what a 
picture the idea of worms brings to one ! Creep- 
ing, crawling! Imagine the human being, 
creeping, crawling on the ground, lying in dark, 
dank places! God and His worms! Is that 
the best God can do? The Infinite, the Eternal, 
the Omnipotent God ! His highest creation, 
made in His own image and likeness, worms ! 
If we do not live up to what we perceive, it is 
only because we have not yet come into such 
touch with God, as to love Him enough to do 
better. But if we continually say to ourselves, 
and try to make ourselves believe, that we are 
worms of the dust and miserable sinners, then, 
according to the metaphysical law, we should 
remain everlastingly in our sin and misery, be- 
cause the more we believe that we are sinners, the 
greater the tendency to sin; "as a man thinketh 
in his heart, so is he." We find that those who 
believe most outrageously in sin, who are having 
the hardest fight over it, nevertheless run into it. 
Their sub-conscious mind, from this stand-point, 
carries them right into the thing which they do 
not want to do, because they believe in it, and 
fear it. Fear leaves one vulnerable. 



270 



So long as we have a consciousness of sin, we 
are not pure in heart, we are not one with God, 
who is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and 
cannot look on iniquity. We have all had some 
experience of this. We did not want to go wrong 
in the ordinary way, but we believed in sin, and 
found ourselves being drawn in that direction. 
This is not the true way to think of ourselves, for 
we find that, whatever the mind is engaged in and 
united with, and whatever it heartily believes in, 
is a constant influence, and is bound to concrete 
itself in the feeling; and feeling is the crux of 
the whole matter. 

Jesus gave us plenty of warrant for saying that 
we are sons of God. From beginning to end 
He spoke of God not only as "my Father," but 
as "your Father." Now with this idea before 
the mind, and with the endeavor to measure up 
to the truth of this statement, the man stops 
his grovelling in the lower nature, and begins to 
rise into the higher. We have been taught to pray 
to our Father as though we were to influence 
Him to change His will concerning us, when 
His will is changeless. It is we who must change 
our self-consciousness, in order to know God, 
because He is changeless in His nature. So 
our prayer should be a desire to know God as 



271 



Wisdom, Goodness, Health, Love, Eternal Life; 
and the mind should have its moments for 
dwelling upon those ideas, and dismissing all 
others. It is impossible for one who has been 
imbued with the old teaching, the old experience, 
to engage in prayer in the true sense without 
some training, some method; and so we have 
methods by which we learn to get control of the 
mind and heart, in order to put our whole 
consciousness into touch with our Great Silent 
Partner. 

Prayer, according to the teaching of Jesus, 
is the greatest method of healing, and is the 
most practical way of receiving daily comfort 
and daily light. We shall learn as we go on, 
how to enter into the inner chamber, how to 
close the door, and how to pray to our Father 
Which is in secret. 

XIV. 

WE often hear the expression, knowledge is 
power. Has it ever occurred to us that 
Knowledge is Life? 

God is Omnipotence, Life, Knowledge. Now 
this common saying that "knowledge is power" 
has a basis in Truth itself. We often speak 

272 



greater things than we know, greater than we 
realize. This term, knowledge, in the psychical 
sense, knowledge of things, is one idea; take it 
further, into the fundamental, the spiritual, and 
we see indeed, that Knowledge is not only 
Power, but that it is Life, Life Itself — God, if 
you will. Knowledge, even of conditions, and 
how to manage them, is all that we need in the 
world, in order that we may struggle wisely 
with our environment. If we could thoroughly 
understand ourselves, merely from the normal 
human-being side, and could understand nature 
intelligently according to sense, that we might 
fall into harmony with its, and with our own, 
order and meaning, we should be healed for the 
time being of all our difficulties. Wisdom, 
applied merely to sensuous things, would get us 
what friends, what food, what money we need. 
We can see how it would bring us everything, 
by bringing knowledge of how to fall into line 
with the forces which we call nature ; and how 
it would really prevent us from doing with our 
minds that which tears down our bodies. In 
fact, even while ignorant of God, without knowl- 
edge of the fundamental, if one knew enough 
to fall into line with the normal, one would not 
be ill ; so, to get right down to the root, what 



273 



we really want to be healed of, is ignorance. 
Every time we go sneezing along the street we 
simply hang out the sign of ignorance, the sign 
that we do not know enough of our own powers 
to keep ourselves from this effect of air upon 
our organization. Every time we go about in 
any kind of psychical sickness, such as temper, 
or physical sickness such as rheumatism, it 
announces to the passer by, if he knows enough 
to understand, "Here am I, just so much of a 
fool, at the present moment ; I do not know 
enough to manage my affairs of mind, and con- 
sequently of body, rightly." But we are talking, 
in this particular lecture, of a Knowledge that is 
greater than the knowledge of how to keep well 
simply by not violating the laws of nature. If 
they keep these, the ignorant will get on fairly 
well, for their short span. What we really want 
is to know the Principle out of which health 
came originally. This conditional state of health 
which we experience from day to day has come 
out of Principle, out of Knowledge. It has come 
into scientific form in body from the Science- 
Principle by means of which the body was born 
originally. The Omniscience of God is at the 
back of it all. When man knows that which put 
the body together in the normal way before he 

274 



knew that he was; which stood him up square 
on his feet in health and strength and vigor; 
which made him ready, and carried him up to 
that place in his evolution where he finds him- 
self; I say, when he knows the Power, the 
Goodness, the Health-Principle, that lies at the 
back of his full health, then he is really healed 
for ever of any temptation to fall into disease 
of any kind. 

To know God is Life Eternal. What would be 
the use of Jesus talking about knowing God, if 
it were not possible to know God? Could we 
follow one who taught things that were impracti- 
cable, that could not be done? Of what use 
would such an one be to the human race? We 
know that He meant what he said, and that He 
was practical. To know God, to know the 
Great Cause out of which this organization of 
nature and man has come, is Life Eternal, be- 
cause God is Life, and God is Eternal; that 
is, God is the Substance that never dies, that 
abides, though every living form be wiped out 
of existence. It is unthinkable that the Great 
Power of the universe could ever die. Our minds 
can hold no idea of finality in connection with 
Principle. Human beings grow up and drop 
off, but the Great Knowledge, the Great Power, 

275 



the Great Wisdom is continually bringing forth 
and manifesting Itself. To know this Power, 
to get the mind in touch with It, so that we 
could take hold of, and use It, as It used Itself 
in bringing forth the universe, would indeed be 
Life Eternal. 

Just as knowledge of God, knowledge of 
Truth, will bring forth Life Eternal, so it will 
bring forth Health Eternal, the Health that 
cannot be taken away from one. We have seen 
that God is Health, that God is Knowledge, and 
that God is First. Before anything was, God 
IS. Health and Knowledge WAS, long before 
It was ever brought into a conditional state. 
The Health of the human race, that has made 
the race possible at all, Subsisted long before 
any man came into the condition wherein he ex- 
perienced health, while yet ignorant of this First 
of health. That is, the Power to express, and 
the idea of expressing, must have Subsisted 
before anything was brought forth into physical 
form. Now this is just as true of abnormal 
conditions as of normal. The abnormal condi- 
tion exists on an hypothesis, that of human ex- 
perience, material origin. Normal conditions 
arise from subjective mental movements on 
sound premises; abnormal conditions, whether 

276 



evidenced by simple pain or by bony tumor, 
arise from subjective mental movements on un- 
sound premises. These movements may be 
inspired directly from the realm of conscious 
mental action, or they may arise from hypotheses 
already established in the under-consciousness 
of the human race. 

There is no dodging the issue, that we have 
practically lived as though our heredity were 
merely human. This is a fundamental error of 
premise, which has indeed brought about a 
perfect carnival of errors in consciousness, and 
in its bodily form. 

To know our Power, not simply to experience 
it through feeling strong and well, but to know 
It, as we know the mathematics which we have 
really mastered, is to know God, hence never to 
know weakness. It would be impossible to 
know God, and to know anything further, for 
He is all. God changes not. Therefore, any- 
thing that God brings forth, has not gone from 
Him, because it is impossible to take anything 
from the Almighty. It is impossible to take 
anything away from Omniscience; there is no- 
where for it to go, no state for it to go into; 
and if you cannot take from God, then anything 
that He has created is still in Him; is created 



2 77 



out of His Substance, yet abiding in it. It is 
one thing to abide in a Substance, and another 
think to know that Substance, and to know that 
one abides in It. Whether in a state of existence, 
or whether lying latent in the Substance-Knowl- 
edge, man is in God, as much when expressed 
as before he was expressed; otherwise God would 
be less to-morrow than to-day, would have lost 
somewhat of His Substance; He would then 
not be the Omnipotent, for some of the Power 
would have been given over to man. 

To be healed of ignorance of ourselves — to be 
healed of the superstitions of a race that has 
supposed itself to have fallen, that has believed 
itself to have inherited all the diseases and all 
the mistakes of the past — to be healed of a belief 
in the truth of these experiences, to know that 
they are simply vagaries of the mind, no matter 
how vividly they have appeared in conditions ; 
to know the Power, the Wisdom, the Goodness, 
which constitutes the constructive element in 
man — would be, I say, to be healed for ever of 
disease. 

We have the perception of all this, but we need 
to be very true to it, because our entire feeling- 
nature has been built up on the belief that God 
was to be met with in another sphere, that He 

278 



is more personally present elsewhere than with 
us in this planet. Being imbued with this idea 
of God, in our sub-consciousness, we must not 
expect to acquire a thorough working-knowledge 
of God at once, but we can get enough to make 
life really worth living, in a little while, a few 
weeks. By paying attention to this great 
Principle and treating it seriously, we can 
acquire enough to give ourselves peace, to give 
ourselves comfort and happiness from day to 
day, to keep ourselves from falling into sick- 
ness, and into states of emotion that are un- 
pleasant and not good for us. There are those 
who have had the experience of acquiring 
enough to be practically well of long-standing 
ailments in a few weeks. We do not all gain 
the knowledge as quickly as this, but we can 
perceive the Truth, and can get practical 
results if we treat the teaching seriously, as we 
would treat any science or art that we wished 
to follow. 

Everyone has involuntarily testified through 
disease, accident, old age, and death, that a con- 
dition of perfect health, life, and knowledge, is 
apparently not to be had in this life. We have 
experienced the use of Principle as related to our 
environment, but never dreamed of applying it 

279 



to our consciousness; so we need not be dis- 
couraged if we are beset by difficulties during 
our first efforts. Let us remember that we have 
the Knowledge-Principle with us always ; the 
consciousness of this renders life deeply interest- 
ing from day to day. To know that we now have 
the opportunity of gaining something towards 
a state of spiritual illumination and physical 
well-being, irradiates all the phenomena of life. 
It is sometimes said that mental healing in 
its various forms is only good for the hysterical, 
or for weak-willed people, because it teaches them 
to use their will-power — the human will. If we 
learn, and are really convinced in our minds, 
that it is just as wrong and as disgraceful to be 
sick as it is to steal ; and if we act as consistently 
upon this idea as we act upon that regarding our 
neighbor's goods, we shall inhibit many temp- 
tations to fall ill; thus we may with advantage 
use our wills from a human stand-point to that 
end. If we are in the desperate habit of being 
frequently ill, it is greatly to our credit to use our 
wills to enforce a doubt in every single thing that 
could possibly speak to us of illness, and to be- 
lieve in everything suggestive of health, whether 
from the objective or subjective realm. Why 
should we doubt the normal within us? That 

280 



which beats our hearts, which takes the products 
of the earth and converts them into flesh, why 
should we doubt this? This is all the power 
that we have. This is what has brought us up 
to the present day. Just because some draught 
of air is blowing, or some foolish fear is con- 
fronting us outside, why should we turn from the 
great Power within, which is keeping us day by 
day, and run right into the arms of this fear, 
saying, "I believe in you, it is you that are my 
power, not the Life within"? Why should we 
turn away from this great Intelligence by which 
everything is kept within, and give the earth, or 
the air, or the fire, dominion over us? 

If, then, a man has grasped no more than 
the fact that it is wrong to be ill, he may use 
his will from that stand-point, and, standing 
up in the face of the temptation to fall down 
with illness, say, "No, I will not be ill." He 
will find that he has tremendous power from 
the mere use of the will in accordance with 
common sense and law. It is not right to 
be ill. It is not right that a house be in dis- 
order when it is intended to be orderly. There- 
fore we will not have our house in disorder. 

Now just as there is but One Power in this 
universe, so there is Only One Will ; and that is 

281 



the divine Will. That will you and I have in- 
herited. Just as we have inherited the principle 
of numbers, of chemistry, and are making use 
of them every day in our outside lives, so we 
have inherited a will from God the Father 
Almighty, and we have not inherited any other. 
The Will-Substance is infinite; it is eternal; it 
is omnipotent; it is God's Will; but when we 
make use of that Will from mere human pre- 
mises, not knowing God from whence it came, 
we get results accordingly. If we use the will 
from a divine stand-point, we shall get divine 
results in our consciousness. The will used 
humanly, is a great force ; used divinely, it is 
Power irresistible. 

How shall we use the will from a Divine 
stand-point? In just the converse of the way 
we use it from a human stand-point. Suppose 
for instance, I knew the influence of the mind 
over the body, not only over my own body, 
but over the mind and therefore secondarily 
over the body of another; and suppose I knew 
no higher ground of action than the use of the 
will to break down the beliefs of another in his 
illness, and to install my own idea of health; 
wishing to heal this other, I should then con- 
centrate my whole attention upon the throwing 

282 



of my will into that person, to make him 
believe that he was well, to make him feel 
my feeling at the moment, knowing that if 
I could make him believe and feel my will, 
my purpose, I might, in one or many treat- 
ments, force the belief upon him that he was 
well. I should thus be making use of a law 
that exists, namely, that just as one stronger 
in bodily strength can overcome one of weaker 
power, so one with stronger feeling, greater 
conviction, can dominate the weaker conscious- 
ness. I should be putting forth my power, my 
will, and I should expect to succeed, having 
also the law of suggestion to work for me to 
this end. This would be an hypnotic experi- 
ment, to a certain extent, and perfectly legiti- 
mate, so long as I was doing my best to a 
good end. I do not say that it would be wise. 
For those who use this method it is the 
invariable custom to look the patient straight 
in the eyes, with a determination to break 
down the barrier of the objective faculties, and 
they like it all the better if they can produce 
the hypnotic sleep. Now this is the use of the 
will from a human stand-point, person over 
person. Here the will is fixed upon the object, 
it is fixed upon the mind of the person, with 

283 



determination to dominate him. All this, how- 
ever, has no place in this teaching; everyone 
is free, even to be ill. 

By breaking down the will of a man, and 
forcing upon him a belief independent of his 
intelligence, we may succeed in healing him 
for the time of his belief in his disease, and of 
the expression of the same, but have we not 
rendered him more and more vulnerable to 
mental influence from the people about him, 
more and more likely to become a football to 
the mental, condition of others, so that the last 
state of that man is worse than the first? 

Now what is the converse of this practice? 
It is to fix the mind steadily upon the Subject, 
steadily upon the Great Silent Partner, not 
recognizing even the little partner — the soul- 
life ; but going straight to the Divine. The 
will is fixed for the purpose of holding the 
faculties of the mind steadily over one of the 
modes of Being, while the faculties of the sub- 
jective mind take the premises suggested by the 
fixed purpose of the conscious man, and function 
up Original Health from the Great Subject, in' 
the form of condition ; the condition is then 
established, not through dominating the feeling- 
nature of the person, but through the establish- 

284 



ing of a sympathy with Being — first in our own 
consciousness, then, by similarity of organiza- 
tion and one-ness of Principle, in that of the other 
— through the divine sympathy that is awakened 
involuntarily by our own high state of con- 
scious realization. In this case the suggestion 
is subjective, and is made by the high sympathy 
of the one divine organization with that of the 
other. The suggestion — if we may call it by 
that materialistic term — is then evolved out of 
the primary mental organization, which has not 
taken it on through the medium of the soul- 
consciousness, but through the divine sympathy 
that exists between the latent spiritual entity in 
each person, even as human sympathy, soul- 
sympathy, exists between people in the realm 
of humanity. 

Just as above the audible vibrations there are 
others which the ear is not sensitized to hear, 
and as above the visible vibrations of light are 
those which the eye cannot see, so, above the 
ordinary scale of human emotion, there exists 
a potentiality, which, when acted upon, will 
raise the consciousness so completely above all 
mundane conditions, as to flood the whole 
organization with life, health, and inspiration, 
thus bringing with it instantaneous healing. 

285 



I can see how the healer, in ideal contact with 
the Principle of Being, can rise into such a 
state that a person can be healed in an instant 
of time. 

There is a vast deal of difference between 
making a man believe that he is well, that he is 
happy, that he is good, that the opposite er- 
roneous conditions do not obtain at all, when in 
each particular they are most evident — between 
this, I say, and recognizing the existing con- 
ditions, in such wise as to deal intelligently 
with them from the stand-point of Principle. 
This is capable of putting that which is wrong 
in condition, right, in the mental and emotional 
realm, as in the objective universe. The former 
is stultifying in its nature ; it is intellectual 
coercion, and its effect upon the character tends 
to produce a condition wherein discrimination is 
blunted between that which is normal, elevating, 
and ennobling, and that which is false : while 
the latter calls out the spiritual nature, opening 
up the higher realm of consciousness, and in- 
citing to courage, confidence, and loyalty to 
Truth and Righteousness, regardless of comfort 
or discomfort for the moment. True healing 
has a Principle at the back of it, and comfort 
should not be bought by cowardly denial of facts, 

286 



but erroneous conditions should be met with 
intelligence, and dealt with bravely on Principle. 
To deal with them it is not by any means 
necessary to deny their existence as fact. We 
have simply to apply the Principle of Rightness 
to the working out of right conditions. To feel 
comfortable is not good enough, unless that 
comfort be established on sound premises. 

Just as the heart beats, the blood circulates, 
with still, peaceful, harmonious, geometrical 
action, so, without our co-operation, does the 
divine Will work. It is a still small voice ; it is a 
peaceful flowing. 

We sometimes use the words force and power 
interchangeably. Force never could exist but 
for Power. Force only tells of Power, but Power 
is still; Power IS. Power is the Substance, 
which, when functioning in the elements, is 
known to sense as force. Therefore, when a man 
does not know the Power of God, and does not 
know how to be still, and let that Power work 
as the Will of God, the Will of Knowledge, the 
Will of Wisdom, and be manifested in him ; then 
let him use what force he can bring to bear upon 
his consciousness to make himself do right. Let 
him stand right up against all these abnormal 
things, and say, "No, I will not bow down to 

287 



you ana serve you." We may be very sure that 
at the first temptation to fall in with a condition 
of illness, the most inane thing we can do, is to 
go to bed and think about disease. Instead of 
doing this, let us jump up, and rouse in our- 
selves that which brings about a normal state, 
and sets in action vibrations adverse to sickness. 
This is the first stage, this is the human use 
of the will. When we do not know better, 
then let us do the best we can. There are 
methods, however, of applying the mind to 
the knowledge of God. 

The brain is the organ of thought. Human 
thought is born out of soul-stuff. Thoughts 
are represented by words. ''Thought" is the 
metaphysical term for that for which "word" 
is the physical term. 

As we said, every word has a spirit in it, and 
the spirit of a word is the meaning of it. If it 
have no meaning, then it is but a word in the 
letter; it is a mere sensation. Thoughts lead 
to words ; words suggest thoughts. There are 
words that mean God. To hold these words 
up to the mind, with the intent that the brain- 
consciousness shall do nothing else than dwell 
on them, to engage the faculties of the mind 
only with those words and the ideas which are 

288 



suggested by them, establishes a connection 
between the word and the thought. The 
faculties that are delegated to work in the 
brain-consciousness, being a correspondence of 
those in the subjective mind, awaken to action 
the latter, and set them to function from their 
Principle, out of which the spirit of the words 
is to be evolved. 

Thoughts are born out of feeling. God is 
Original Feeling, which can be translated into 
the feeling of godlikeness in a man's con- 
sciousness, into harmony, peace, light, illu- 
mination, and from this state the brain can 
translate it into thought, and from thought 
it can be expressed in words. This is the 
unconscious process, which may also be con- 
sciously reversed; so that we may hold the 
idea of Wisdom before the conscious mind, to 
the exclusion of all other thoughts, until this 
great idea stands there alone, as a beacon light, 
flashing out for the moment all the darkness of 
condition. The mind is now in touch with 
the Most High, and consciousness is being 
evolved which may in a moment of need be 
functioned into thought, as it has already 
become a latency in subjective experience. 
The mind is then drawing upon Life, Knowl- 

289 



edge, and Power, which, when the man goes 
to his daily avocations, will be translated auto- 
matically into terms of inspiration, into terms 
of wisdom. 

This is the Science of Silence. Original 
Power is silent. When sight and hearing are in 
abeyance, and the body is still, all is silent; but 
the Silence does not only consist in thought 
and sense being stilled, it is a high state of 
consciousness, out of which nascent thought 
may come to one in active life, at a moment 
of need. For the time being, however, we are 
in a state of realization, developing spiritual 
consciousness, and having no need for thought. 
Our great idea is to form such consciousness as 
shall bear its fruit in thought, all fresh for the 
moment of use ; not to entertain ourselves with 
beautiful reveries. 

The more perfectly the mind is poised, the 
more is accomplished, both when working for 
ourselves or for another. The purpose of 
entering the Silence is to become one with 
Principle. One-ness with the personality of 
another is established only through the action 
of the Principle, because of the one-ness of the 
Parent-stuff, much the same as when one strikes 
a note on one instrument and hears the same 



290 



note vibrating in another, indicating the same 
attunement. In the Silence the mind is with- 
drawn from sense-perception, that it may sense 
only from within outward; although we can 
hear a pin drop, and all the senses are more 
keenly alive than in the ordinary state, yet the 
mind is under bonds to pay no heed. Our 
inspiration will give us instantaneous judg- 
ment as to whether the sound is to be noticed 
,or not. It needs training to remove the vivid- 
ness of sense-impressions, both of the present 
and of the past, that this higher consciousness 
may be installed. In this kind of meditation 
there is a process going on in the mill of the 
mind, of which we are unconscious as to 
thought, but deduction is taking place in feel- 
ing, and there is a lifting up of conditions 
from off the consciousness. If for twenty, 
fifteen, or even two minutes, we can, without 
any change of thought, hold only one idea, 
such as, "I am thine Omniscient Life within 
thee," the good feeling will come welling up 
from within, and will be distributed throughout 
the entire organism. 

In applying his mind to wisdom in a worldly 
sense, a man's object is to get the better of 
another in order to attain what he wants himself. 



291 



There is a way, however, of getting what he 
desires right out of the world's stuff itself, and 
thus wronging no man. 

There is yet this other way. 

If the word Wisdom is held in a mind trained 
in meditation, with all else shut out, as though 
illuminated by a great light with which it is en- 
tirely engaged, then the mind is carried straight 
back to its Principle of Being. To make a 
picture of it in sense, imagine the body lit up 
within by a great flame, which shall be, ideally, 
Wisdom lighting the mind. Thus the connection 
is made. Wisdom comes. This one word held 
in that way is a prayer of tremendous importance 
to the man and to the world. 

We know that there are times in our lives when 
we are conscious of not knowing what to do 
next, in order to bring our affairs into a satis- 
factory condition. We look this way, we look 
that way, we look all ways, and we do not see 
where to turn or what more to do, and yet some- 
thing has to be done, next month, next week, 
to-day. "I do not know what to do," we say, 
"and yet I must make some move, or I shall be 
ruined." The way is all blocked, and we are 
anxious and troubled. Or it may be some small 
thing in the family only, but it worries and frets 

292 



us. To know this great Truth, what Wisdom 
will do, and to apply it earnestly, faithfully, truly, 
because it is our birthright, needs practice. Let 
us take this matter in all seriousness. We are 
consciously establishing the connection between 
our own personal consciousness and the Divine 
Substance lying at the base of it all. 

If, pari passu with our daily life on the 
ordinary plane, we take the time and the spirit 
necessary to develop this spiritual consciousness, 
this consciousness of God latent in us, it will 
manifest itself for us one day, as we evolve out 
of the Adam-process of doing things by the 
sweat of the brow. 

A man educated in this teaching c^me to me 
at the time of the great bank crisis in America 
in 1893, an d although he was very rich, and his 
credit was good, he told me that a concern in 
another State, with which he was associated, 
had failed, and that he was involved to the 
extent of fifty thousand dollars. He said that 
ordinarily he could have met the situation with- 
out the slightest difficulty, but that money was 
so scarce that he did not know how to raise the 
sum, and in two weeks it would fall due. His 
back was aching, his head was aching, and he 
was distraught. He was a neurotic with a very 

293 



active mind. He came to me for treatment, 
after which I said, "Since this is a case where 
every avenue is apparently closed, there is no 
use in turning over and over in the mind what 
is to be done; there is but one way now, and 
that is the greatest of all. Just take the word, 
'Wisdom — Omniscient Wisdom,' and whenever 
you are tempted to think what on earth you can 
do, say, 'Wisdom' and drop the rest. It does 
not matter how many times you say it in a day, 
but, whatever you do, don't think; the right 
thought will evolve out of Wisdom at the 
moment of need." 

As the day approached for him to liquidate, his 
consciousness became very insistent. Thoughts 
like this would come, "Now you know you will 
have to meet this crisis, and you will have nothing 
to meet it with." He told me that when he went 
to bed "the morning was after him." He was 
beset with thoughts and fears. "You had 
better be thinking what you can do, you will 
fail." The first thing early in the morning, the 
same suggestion. To all he faithfully and steadily 
answered, "Omniscient Wisdom." The day ar- 
rived. On his way to his office he had to pass 
a bank with which he had never had any dealings, 
but which had long desired his custom, and — ■ 



294 



although he himself was a director of another 
great bank in Chicago — just as he passed the 
door, with these potent words constantly in his 
mind, the idea suddenly presented itself to him 
for the first time, when on the very spot, that 
this bank would prove to be his way out. He 
went in, stated his case, and although not a bank 
in Chicago was lending money, even to the 
richest, he secured his accommodation. What 
would have happened, if he had been in a state 
of nervous anxiety? These financiers are sensi- 
tive as a photographer's plate. They will detect 
a tremor of a man's consciousness quicker than 
lightning, although his face may be galvanized. 
If he had gone in there with his knees knocking, 
he would never have got the money. If he had 
gone with mere bluff, he would never have got 
it, for those were fateful times in Chicago. 

If you can keep your mind calm — if you can 
keep yourself in a state of inspiration — that 
which is best will come to you. There is that 
within you which knows better than you. Some 
musicians will tell you that they can sit down, 
without thinking, and play, but that when they 
begin to think and watch their hands, they lose 
the whole thing. In order to get into contact 
with that which is within you, you must have 

295 



inspiration, and you must not have fear. It is 
only in times of inspiration that this particular 
intelligence within you will reveal itself, and give 
you what you desire. "If any man lack Wis- 
dom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men 
liberally." 

Now a man never lacks Wisdom. This 
thinking from a certain stand-point makes him 
feel that he does so, when, if he took another 
stand-point and another course altogether, he 
would find there was abundant Wisdom in the 
Principle of his mind ready for use at the first 
moment of perception. This is one of the 
modes of self-culture which we will enlarge 
upon later. It is one of the greatest ways of 
permanent healing, of getting illumination from 
within, which makes one bold and fearless as a 
lion, so that outside things have no power over 
one. We know that there are states of mind 
when poison will not affect us, when it will not 
produce the smallest result. I have been to 
patients more than once in my life who had 
taken morphia enough to kill them, without 
the slightest effect, the pain was so great: it did 
not even cause drowsiness. 

If the conscious mind and the mental organi- 
zation Avithin can be so engrossed with pain, that 

296 



the former will not notice, nor the latter work 
out in bodily condition, a deadly dose of poison, 
how much more then, can one rise, when in an 
illuminated state of prayer and communion with 
God, and Faith in the Most High, to a place 
where ordinary physical conditions are con- 
trolled — and what endless possibilities open out, 
even to the fulfilment of the promise of Jesus, 
that a man may drink any deadly thing, and it 
shall not hurt him ! 



XV. 



THE use of words that have a fundamental, 
spiritual, significance is one of the most 
important methods of self-culture. We are in 
the habit of living in the concrete world of 
sense. We want to become just as conscious 
of living in what is to us at present the abstract 
world of Knowledge — Spirit, as we now are of 
the happenings in sense-life. We must get to 
know the one as practically as the other. We 
have been born into the sense-life some years, 
and have an heredity of experience in person- 
ality, through our ancestors. It is time to 
enter into our true heritage of Knowledge, of 
Goodness, of Life Itself, the Principle of Life. 

297 



The same Principle obtains in the Spiritual 
Being as in the sensuous being. 

Words — or thoughts — have a regular invo- 
lution as well as a regular evolution. For 
instance, let us take the word Life, meaning 
God. It has been evolved to express one 
aspect of the great Knowledge-Substance. It 
has been born right out of the God-Substance 
to represent It. Man has an organization by 
which he is able to conceive ideas. First there 
was an idea, too vast to be represented by one 
thought, so it began to break up into many; 
thoughts translated themselves into words, and 
thus we have the whole process of the evolution 
of the idea, Principle, into the words express- 
ing It. The idea "Life" has come right up 
through these different processes, until it has 
taken the form of a word. 

Now, as I said, there is an involution, just 
as there is an evolution. For instance, we 
hold steadily in the mind the word "LIFE." 
This calls up the idea, which in turn is dealt 
with by the subjective faculties. A feeling is 
thereby evoked correspondent to the idea, and 
thus we have a direct involution back to the 
Most High — Original Feeling — from whence 
the word first proceeded. 

298 



We have learnt that Life does not mean simply 
physical animation, but that it means the great 
Principle out of which the world has come, 
out of which man has come — the Principle of 
Knowledge, for the use of the mind. 

Principle appertains both to the mental and to 
the sensuous life. It means Original Intelligence, 
Original Knowledge. We find, then, that this 
word "Life" has come into our minds by an 
evolution from the Great First. The word 
"Life" has a spirit in it. W T hen we understand 
the spiritual meaning of Life, we have caught 
the spirit of the word. This is the entire object 
of the thought, to produce the spirit of the 
word, the Truth. Having now learnt what 
Life means, in its spiritual sense, we take this 
word into the mind, as a word. Our thoughts 
are perhaps fully occupied with affairs at the 
time; our emotional and sensational selves are 
on the plane of the senses and of human ex- 
perience, but wishing to get our whole con- 
sciousness on to another plane for the time being, 
we leave the mere physical, with endeavor to 
rise to the realization of the Great Power 
within; knowing what the word Life stands for, 
we quietly still the mind, holding the one word, 
and nothing else. 



299 



This purpose in the upper consciousness will 
call the attention of the faculties of the sub- 
jective mind, which will begin to function from 
our desire ; and thus from the Life-Principle, God, 
deliver concrete into our consciousness some- 
thing illuminating, something constructive, 
belonging to the idea, Life. We may not, 
indeed we should not, at the moment, have any 
intellectual perception of Life Itself, but we 
shall experience this when we need it. Our 
purpose is not to try to translate the conscious- 
ness that we have at the time into thoughts or 
words; our purpose is to become still, and lay 
up a store of spiritual consciousness that may 
stand us in good stead when the exigencies of 
life require it. 

Take, for instance, the idea that we have of 
ourselves as human beings, material. We think 
that the body can do exactly what it pleases with 
us, and that we have no dominion over it. There 
comes a time when the body seems to say, "I am 
tired, I cannot do any more of this," and we in- 
terpret this feeling as of the body, because the 
sensation is connected with it ; the sensation 
may be so strong that the fatigue becomes weak- 
ness ; and so we say that the body must have 
rest. It is not the body, it is the conscious- 

300 



ness. We are deceived. That is our false idea. 
Fortunately spiritual words have two offices, 
which they fulfil when we use them for self- 
culture. In the first place, if we repeat a spiritual 
word over and over, it keeps the mind from the 
"tramp" thoughts that are seeking to engage 
its attention. Take the word "Spirit." We or- 
dinarily think ourselves material. We want to 
change our conception of ourselves. We are 
spiritual. Suppose, then, that we let Being 
speak to us, the Being within, That which is beat- 
ing our hearts, and let It say, "I am Spirit, I am 
Spirit." This is a new thing for the mind to be 
occupied with, it is something that is really light- 
ening and spiritual. Although we are otherwise 
occupied, still we are able to say, "I am Spirit." 
If we take a longer walk than usual, to which 
perhaps we have looked forward with dread, 
thinking that it will tire us, such a feeling of 
vitality will obtain, if we go on saying this word, 
that when we get to the end of our journey, we 
shall scarcely know that we have walked at 
all, because the mind has been occupied 
pleasantly, usefully, and constructively, with 
this thought of Spirit. It has taken away that 
dead, heavy feeling, that mere human dread of 
fatigue. "I am Spirit, I am Spirit." If we 



301 



say these words faithfully, we shall not be 
likely to think very consecutively about any- 
thing else. They have a spiritual vibration in 
them which tends towards constructiveness and 
Life. "I am Spirit, I am Spirit/' It does 
not occupy our minds to the exclusion of 
attending to anything that we are about, but 
our minds are prevented from having a back- 
ground of the pessimistic expectation of fatigue. 
Therefore I recommend those who are taking 
up this teaching to get into the habit of speak- 
ing these great words which mean God, as a 
defense against some of the negative influences 
by which they may be beset. The word is 
nothing. We accept it as a token. When we 
think of the kind of thoughts — to use the meta- 
physical term for words — that are prone to 
be in our minds day after day, we shall see 
that, if we could extract the spirit of those 
thoughts, it is possible that this kind of spirit 
would not be very pleasant to live with. Every 
one of those thoughts has an emotion at the 
back of it; they are born out of, and partake 
of, the emotion of the soul-consciousness. Tt 
means a great deal to us what kind of thoughts 
we think, what kind of thoughts we allow to 
take possession of our minds, whether they are 

302 



the stray thoughts of the mundane sphere, or 
whether they are spiritual, and of a high order. 
It makes a great difference to general feeling, 
and a greater difference as we go on in the 
years; because, if we choose this better way, 
the kind of emotions which have been hitherto 
constantly in the soul, and which tend towards 
death, will finally lose their stirring power; 
whereas the kind of ideas and thoughts which 
have behind them a great, splendid, spiritual 
meaning, must tend to be continually con- 
structive. 

So then, no matter what we are doing, if we 
really wish to accomplish something, and to have 
a health that will never leave us, it is well worth 
while to use these words a great deal. I have 
used them. I cannot tell you how much I have 
used them, day after day. There was a year 
when for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, 
you would never have found me without them, 
no matter what I was doing; such was my state 
that I had to do it, to be able to hold on at all 
and attend to my business. It was the only way 
by which I could keep going. That is one form 
of word-culture which is healing in its nature. 
We must ask for what we want. God is Spirit. 
We want the Spirit of God. It is just like call- 



303 



ing on God by name. "God! God!" It is con- 
necting the upper consciousness with the under- 
lying Truth-Principle— the "Within." 

We have to make a preparation to get into the 
Silence of which we have spoken before. We 
have to train the imagination. The imagination 
is the pilot-faculty of the mind. We cannot get 
on without it. It only needs to be trained to do 
the bidding of man. We must learn to be able 
to concentrate the mind, not to let it be scattered, 
but centred upon one thing. In training the 
imagination, it is good to use it constructively 
at once, to imagine, for instance, that our bodies 
are full of light, that they are a perfect blaze of 
light. Let us imagine that we take a light and 
carry it right down through the inner parts of our 
bodies, and let it shine. We may call that light 
"Love," "Wisdom," or "Life." If there is 
anything particularly wrong in any part of our 
bodies, we let the Light shine there, and the 
imagination can, out of that ideal Light, create 
heat, so that we can actually feel warmth in any 
part, or through the whole, of our bodies. It is 
good to train ourselves to be able to feel what- 
ever we imagine. Then we can choose what we 
will imagine, and thus we can always feel right, 
and do away with this consciousness of being 

304 



human and material. It is good training to the 
mind to imagine the arm passing right through 
the body from back to front. Let us imagine 
it right inside the body, nothing to hinder it at 
all. We can see it there. It is also possible to 
imagine ourselves speaking a word in the foot. 
We can put a word anywhere we like in our 
bodies, and feel the consciousness of it. Imagi- 
nation is capable of this. 

All this is simply for training the mind, that 
we may get it under control, and make use of it 
as we will, before entering the silence ; and if 
one would persevere in these practices many, 
many times a day, month in, month out, there 
is no telling how much would be accomplished 
towards developing the spiritual nature. Thus 
we can take some words like "Oh ! Thou Infin- 
ite, Eternal, Omnipotent Spirit, Omniscient 
within," and we can determine, "now I will say 
this over silently, sitting quietly, and not another 
thought shall come into my mind." But we 
find before we have said the first word, that other 
thoughts have already come. So we go back 
and do it again, and perhaps, at the first sitting 
we shall not get beyond the first word at all, 
but we patiently say that over, until we have 
accomplished our purpose, and when we have 



305 



succeeded with the first word, we take the second, 
and struggle with that and get the better of it, 
and then the third-word, and so on, till by-and- 
by we shall be able to sit quietly with a great 
stillness in the brain, and nothing but the words 
that we are speaking. This puts us into the con- 
dition where we can pray to the Father which is 
in secret; into the condition in which we can 
command the heart, by attaching it to the great 
ideas which these words signify. 

There are several ways of practising concen- 
tration. We may take, for instance, the word 
"Life" and determine that we will not let an- 
other thought enter our brains for the next 
minute or half-minute; we sit quietly, and just 
as surely as we determine this, there will be 
hundreds of them trooping in. It will be the 
signal for all manner of thoughts to come; but 
we take our word "Life," and look on it as 
though it were a weapon, and every time any 
thought, any suggestion of a thought, begins 
to peep up above the horizon of our conscious- 
ness, we hit it with the word "Life, Life." The 
thoughts cannot come any more. They never 
get above the horizon of the mind, "Life, Life." 
As they come, we have to strike them down, 
"Life, Life." We need not do this for very 

306 



long, say half a minute, a quarter of a minute, 
just a little. Let us stop in our tracks wherever 
we are; we shall see how hard it is to make our 
minds do our bidding at first. 

Another method is to look upon our heads as 
though they were clear pools of precious sub- 
stance, that nothing should possibly reach to 
soil in the least; and this the stray thoughts 
that are coming would do. Therefore we will 
"not let one of them approach, so that we may 
keep our clear pool of precious substance (per- 
fectly free of everything; and the spiritual 
consciousness is the precious substance) in our 
brains, which we protect with the word, Life. 
There always comes with the use of these words 
some constructive, up-building action. 

Now we come to the practice of meditation. 
We have prepared ourselves to meditate by these 
means. In this teaching, we mean by meditation 
not thinking at all, but rather the holding of an 
idea in the mind, represented perhaps by many 
words, not thinking about their signification, 
but simply keeping the idea that is represented 
by the words steadily in the mind. The faculties 
of the mind, those involuntary faculties within 
us, will take hold of that idea, and will work with 
it, and will be the means of bringing illumination 

307 



into our consciousness, and into our bodily life. 
Meditation leads us to conscious union with 
God. The Spirit of Truth, coming into the mind 
of man directly and intuitionally, is functioned 
into his consciousness by means of the subjective 
mental system. This that produces life, that pro- 
duces body, also provides knowledge. We do 
not think about the body except as the medium, 
through the interior channels of which feeling 
and ideas are delivered to the man, whether from 
Principle, from soul-life, or from the objective 
realm. Turning the mind in this direction, with 
fixedness upon the Principle, tends also to bring 
the realization of Being as a self-containment, 
thus dissipating the idea of the apartness of God 
from our present consciousness. By-and-by a 
feeling will obtain, representative of the spirit of 
the words used, till finally the body seems more 
like a mental than a physical substance, an 
integer of consciousness, rather than an objective 
entity. It is always well to use our meditations in 
two forms, as primary and secondary meditations. 
Take for instance "I am thine Omniscient Life." 
This is what I call a primary meditation. Here 
comes the use for the' trained imagination. We 
imagine that, just as we should speak words 
with the voice into the sensuous realm, so the 

308 



providing part of us, the providing Knowledge, 
is making Itself known to us, and is saying, 
"I am thine Omniscient Life within thee. Trust 
thou in Me." We are now perfectly relaxed in 
our conscious selves, and we are letting the 
providing part speak up into our self-conscious- 
ness. "I am thine Omniscient Life within 
thee. Trust thou in Me." We shall, as a 
matter of fact, be repeating it in our conscious 
Drains, but we must imagine that it is being 
spoken from the subjective realm within. The 
idea is to get that spirit and that consciousness 
of Life, the Infinite Life of Being, so near to 
us that we feel It actually within us. "I am 
thine Omniscient Life within thee. Trust thou 
in Me, for I will never leave thee nor forsake 
thee, and beside Me there is none else." We get 
into the habit of looking to this creative part of 
our organization as the channel through which 
the Infinite speaks, and instead of thinking of 
it as matter, and as gross material, it should be 
regenerated in the mind, and become to us the 
mental substance, Spirit, Knowledge, Wisdom, 
which in truth it is, rather than the sensuous. 
Thus we rest in this idea, "I am thine Omnis- 
cient Life within thee. Trust thou in Me." The 
mind is getting in touch with the idea, God. 

309 



God, to man, is an idea, and the idea a feeling in 
the mind, and that feeling is the Spirit or con- 
sciousness of the Almighty. We are developing 
that in ourselves. Jesus said, "The Father 
dwelleth within Me." Of course this "dwelling 
within" is not of sense ; it means a mental, in 
contrast to a sensuous state ; but since we have 
a "within" as regards the body — an internal 
organization, we turn our attention that way, in 
order that we may be consciously in harmony, 
and may recognize the channels through which 
ideas are delivered to the mind. 

The "I am" represents what we call a primary 
meditation. By primary, we mean that which 
comes directly from the Most High within, as 
if the Most High within were speaking. The 
words lead straight back to Spirit, straight back 
to the Omniscient ; and they themselves call up 
the Spirit, the Omniscience within. 

The secondary meditation is put in this way, 
"Thou art mine Omniscient Life within me. 
I will trust in Thee." This is the conscious 
man acknowledging that God is the Father 
within him — his Omniscient Life. 

It is good to practise both kinds of medita- 
tion, because we get a sense of union with God 
in that way. It is not simply God that is speak- 



310 



ing to us, but we in our consciousness are answer- 
ing back. Just as there is an infinite sympathy 
between the subjective man and the objective 
man, the soul and the self-consciousness, so 
there is that sympathy existing between the 
divine nature in man, and God, the Substance 
of the divine nature. This practice of medita- 
tion is a most important practice for those who 
wish to be something more than physically well, 
who really wish to know; because this is the 
method of developing the spiritual conscious- 
ness. There is a great deal to say upon the sub- 
ject of meditation, but it is better to practise, 
that we may know. We shall find that we are 
not able at first to get into close contact with 
the inner consciousness, and it is a great help 
to all who wish to learn, to practise with those 
who are already trained ; but it can be done in 
the silence by oneself. 

I want clearly to point out the difference 
between intellectual and spiritual meditation. 
It is the purpose of the former to take a certain 
subject, and, excluding all else from the mind, 
deliberately to pursue definite trains of thought 
relating to it, for a certain end. 

In spiritual meditation, the intent is to still 
the mind of all action in the realm of thought, 

3ii 



and to take a certain idea into it for the purpose 
of spiritual development. Having prepared the 
mind by the exclusion of all else to become 
fixed upon the one idea and rest there, the con- 
sciousness accepts the office, for the time being, 
of holding the idea steadily up to the subjective 
faculties, as a standing suggestion for them to 
function from one of the modes of the Most 
High, expecting in return only the conscious- 
ness of Oneness with this First of all. During 
this exercise, certain knowledge in the form 
of feeling is being born into the subjective 
consciousness, which makes for illumination. 
Different meditations store up layers of this 
spiritual consciousness as spiritual mind-stuff. 
Treasure of experience is being laid up in heaven 
by the man-entity, which is ready to be 
functioned into the thought-realm as inspira- 
tion at the hour of need, by any event or 
circumstance that calls it out. Thus when 
it comes into the realm of the conscious 
mind, it wells up fresh and spontaneous with- 
out any taking of thought as to what to say, 
or what to do. This spiritual meditation will 
not be confused with the psychical, since the 
one is communion with God, and the other 
communion with the race-stuff. It is never 



312 



allowable to enter into a state of trance, nor is 
such a tendency inculcated by this practice, 
but the reverse. Therefore anyone sensitive to 
psychical influences will find the methods here 
given most helpful in overcoming their weak- 
ness. The faculties indeed are more keenly 
alive than ever to what is going on around, but 
they are still. In preparing the mind for medi- 
tation through concentration, by the methods 
which I have been teaching, there should never 
result the slightest fatigue. Anyone experien- 
cing such, should seek personal direction. 

We have inherited a certain consciousness 
from the race, which we have already fully 
realized ; and also consciousness from our Father, 
God, yet to be realized through the divine nature 
of man. Meditation is the means to this end. 
We have an heredity reaching beyond conscious 
human experience, from far back where man 
lay in the subjective realm only. 

We saw that if we go back in imagination to 
the time when this whole universe was fire — 
only fire apparently — God was there, man was 
there; that man was in the elements then, just 
as he is in the elements now, only he was not 
individualized, personalized, or expressed. Back 
there in the fire, before he knew that he was at 



313 



all, or before he had been formed, he was asso- 
ciated with the elements. 

Whatsoever these elements may mean as to 
consciousness, from the mental stand-point, 
from the God stand-point, we do not know. 
We only look at them through the senses ; 
but we know that everything is spiritual, and 
that when we shall know the elements mentally, 
as we now know them sensuously, they will be 
spiritual to us. All that we have inherited of 
body, is from the fire. When the earth was 
formed from the cooling fire, man was still in 
the earth, associated with the elements ; and 
then, like every other creation, he came up 
clothed with the earth, just as divine then as he 
ever will be, but in the deeper chrysalis-state of 
earth consciousness. That is all. Man has 
been plucked right out of the fire. When he 
came into such form that he could begin to 
command the elements, separate, and attract 
them, he began to be clothed in form, and pro- 
gressed until he became the greatest of all crea- 
tions. Why the greatest? Because it was in 
him to know God, to know from whence he 
came, spiritually. This is his divine nature. 
This is why he is spiritual, and, so far as 
I can see, the only reason why he is above 

314 



the animals. He has it within him to know 
God. He made a long journey in the subjec- 
tive state before he was formed. He could then 
endure the fire; he was in the fire; and when 
he shall come into his full consciousness, con- 
sciousness of God — no fire, no element whatever, 
can have dominion over him. He will call into 
his self-consciousness that which he had sub- 
jectively, before he knew that he was at all — ■ 
the capacity of being perfectly uninjured by any 
of the elements with which he always was, and 
is, incorporated. The elements now making up 
his body will have no more power over him than 
they had in the fire, when they existed as fire. 
The elements that are now in the body can be 
transmuted into their original state by chemistry. 
They have come up out of that state, and they 
can go back to it; but it is man's privilege to 
create a consciousness born of the Spirit, that 
shall make him master over all things, master 
by the fact that he knows. 

He will be able to carry the elements along 
with him. The elements out of which he 
originally came will go on with the man, but in 
a different form, just as we translate water into 
steam. It will not be the body as it appears 
now, when once immortalized. 



315 



I may say that all this teaching is nothing, 
unless we practise. It is not given merely to 
interest, but it is given, because, when we 
practise, it becomes a mighty power in us for 
good — always for good. 



THE END. 



316 



ADDENDA. 

To learn how to meditate effectively, it seems 
to me, is the greatest thing in the world, for in 
spiritual meditation the mind actually comes in 
contact with its Cause. As has already been 
set forth, the conscious mind, concentrated upon 
one great idea — which may take a number of 
Avords to express — practically rings up the sub- 
jective mental system, which in answer to the 
call, begins to function the feeling corresponding 
to the idea into the consciousness of the person, 
where it is stored up in the memory, just as 
objective experiences are recorded in the soul. 
This process, continued day by day, makes for 
regeneration, for man's birth into a conscious- 
ness of his spiritual nature. 

While I am aware that there are but few who are 
likely to apply themselves to this end from reading 
a book, and fewer still who are able to do it with- 
out personal instruction and inspiration ; for those 
few, I am appending some meditations which 
have been found most useful and most illuminat- 
ing by the people with whom I am associated. 

I might say still further, that the affirmations 
that are usually taught, and that really belong to 
the first stages of this teaching, have proved 



most useful to the people, but these affirmations 
put as meditations, primary and secondary, con- 
stitute a far safer practice, because there is no 
possible opportunity for the personal "I" to 
become deceived into thinking itself something 
of itself; whereas the continual affirmation, 
"I am good," for instance, might become a piece 
of self-deception and self-stultification, making 
a man believe, in his relative condition of 
consciousness, that he is absolute, whilst his 
neighbor can only too plainly perceive the 
contrary fact. Besides there is none good, save 
God only; meditation recognizes this, and the 
method of it is promotive of the idea. 

*I am thine Omniscient Principle within thee. 
I am thy Divine Health-Substance within thee; 

trust thou in Me. 
I am Light; within Me is no darkness at all. 
I am the divine Son of the living God within 

thee. 
I am thine Almighty Protection and Bounty 

within thee. 
I am thine involuntary Self-Control within thee. 
I am thine Infinite Knowledge and Power within 

thee. 

* The primary "I am" meditations may be made secondary, 
e.g., "Thou art my * * * within me." 

318 



I am thine Omniscient Substance within thee. 

I am thine Omniscient Self-Control within thee. 

I am thy Holy Spirit, thy Comforter, thy Prince 
of Peace within thee. 

I am thine Omniscient Principle of Holiness — 
of Health — within thee. 

I am thy Health Omnipotent ; trust thou in Me, 
and I will give thee the desire of thy heart. 

-I am thy Holy Spirit of Truth within thee. 

I am meek and lowly in heart. 

I am thine Omniscient Principle of Life, Faith, 
Love, within thee; trust thou in Me, for I 
will never leave thee nor forsake thee. 

Be still and know that I am God; I will have 
Health and not disease ; I will have Knowl- 
edge and not ignorance ; I will have Peace 
and not turmoil. 

That I may know the Truth within me. 

Infinite Goodness, I would Thee know. 

Faith in God; have faith in God. 

The Kingdom of God is within. 

Life, Life eternal ; Life alway. 

My Creation and I are one. 

My Creator and I are One. 

Omniscient Wisdom. 

Omniscient Goodness. 



319 



Washington : 

Byron S. Adams, Printer, 

512 nth Street, N. W. 



H 149 82 J* 




Ok MAY 82 



N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 



